PHICHIT: Doraemon, the famous Japanese cat cartoon character, has replaced a real cat in a ceremony farmers hold to ask for relief from a drought and shortage of tap water.
About 100 residents in Thap Khlo district held the traditional rain-asking parade after there had been no rain for more than one month and their crops were dying. They were also desperate with on-again-off-again supply of running water from the state.
Called hae nang maew in Thai, the procession traditionally puts a cat in a cage. Paraders sing and dance when the parade go through their village for people to pour water on the feline in the belief that the wet cat would end the shortage of rain.
The parade on Thursday skipped the animal and put a small Doraemon doll and two bigger cat dolls in its place.
Participants in the procession said they decided to not use a real animal to avoid animal-torture criticism.
Thap Khlo is an agriculture district with more than 160,000 rai of farmland, almost half of the total area. Its main farm products are rice, corn and green beans, according to the district office's website.
Manote Wattanaprasit, a resident who helped organise the parade, said he and his colleagues decided to hold hae nang maew after there had been no rainfall for more than one month, although the country was already in the wet season.
As well, the district suffered from the shortage of tap water for more than a decade with no signs authorities would fix the problem, he added.
The Meteorological Department reported no rainfall in Phichit on Thursday but the weather.com website forecast 60% of the area in the district would see soaked throughout the week.
Doraemon was a character created by Fujiko F Fujio for the Japanese cartoon in 1969. It later appears on TV and movies. It is a robotic cat from the future that comes to use its magic to help a boy.