Just Finished Reading: The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa (FP: 2021) [244pp] 

After enjoying the authors previous novel – The Travelling Cat Chronicles – I was looking forward to her next work. I was not disappointed. Rather than a novel, this was a selection of short stories featuring cats (obviously) and how they affected their owners during a change or crisis in their lives. Oddly (at least in my mind) almost all, if not actually all, the cats in question were strays picked up by various characters in various ways. Whether that’s a standard way to have a cat in your life – in Japan or elsewhere – I don’t know. My last cat arrived in a roundabout way, via the landlady of a friend's girlfriend... 

Off to a great start with ‘The Goodbye Cat’ a story told from the point of view of Kota, a new cat in the Sakuraba family who is ‘promised’ to go to Heaven if he lives long enough and fills out the correct forms. Both funny and quite sad. ‘Bringing Up Baby’ might have been my favourite tale if it wasn’t for two later ones. It told of a socially inept husband of a long-suffering wife who despaired of him ever being able to cope with their new baby – until he finds a kitten in a discarded pizza box and adopts it. Looking after such a small and needy creature (Spin, the cat that is!) turns him into the husband and father she most needed. A very heart-warming story. 'Cat Island' was a bit of a mystical one revolving around a young boy coming to terms with his father's second wife helped by an old woman who is much more than she seems to be. 

The last two in the collection were a surprise. At first, I thought ‘Finding Hachi’ was an earlier draft of Travelling Cat, but it turned out to be an expansion of the novels plot where we learned more about the main characters first cat and his early family tragedy. In ‘Life is Not Always Kind’, the final story, we learn even more about the background of the Travelling Cat’s main character Satoru Miyawaki and his second cat Nana. I was really pleased to be immersed in that lovely narrative again.

Not only are these stories bound to be loved by anyone who is remotely a fan of felines they also give lots of little insights into Japanese culture which is fascinating in its own right. The author has a real eye for life's daily drama too. 

One additional thing that I loved about this book was that each story was preceded by an excellent drawing of a cat by someone who both clearly knew and loved cats. You can see the quality of his work on the cover too. The artist’s name is Yukata Murakami and you’ll be seeing examples of some of his work in future. I’m already looking forward to the author's next book which, as far as I can tell, is a series of short stories based around train travel. Highly recommended although the more sensitive might need a tissue or two ready. 

Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.