Short Story Wednesday: The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

 

The Goodbye Cat is a Japanese book, written by Hiro Arikawa, and translated by Philip Gabriel. It  consists of seven short stories, and each story is set in Japan. All of the stories are about cats. Most of them focus on one cat and the family that it lives with. Another common theme is rescued cats, cats that are brought home after being abandoned. At least two of the stories are about kittens that are too young to survive unless a human intervenes and provides warmth and the necessary nutrition. I learned a lot about that process from this book. Some of the stories are told at least partially from the cat's point of view. 

One of my favorite stories is "The Goodbye Cat." The family in that story have two cats; Diana is the oldest cat, Kota is the youngest. Kota was adopted about the same time the second son in the family is born. The parents discuss and decide on the names for the new cat and the new baby at the same time. (There is much emphasis on names and how they are chosen in these stories.) The story follows the family from the time Kota joins the family until his death of old age, when the youngest son has graduated from college. 

The second story is also very good. In "Bringing Up Baby," a married couple who have recently had a baby also acquire a cat about the same time. The father, Keisuke, is a manga artist, and most of his effort goes into his artistic work. He has always been somewhat flaky and incompetent in other areas of life. When his wife goes to stay with her parents to have the baby, Keisuke finds a tiny kitten and rescues it, and with the help of the vet and online research, learns to help it survive. So when his wife gets home with the baby, she finds a new helpless kitten in the house. But along the way she discovers that his efforts to care for the kitten have given him skills to become a competent parent too. Sounds mawkish, but really it isn't. 

"Cat Island" is about a man, his second wife, and his young son adjusting to their new life as a family together. The family takes a trip to Taketomi Island in Okinawa, referred to as Cat Island. The father is a freelance photographer who is taking photos of the cats on the island for an assignment. That story had some supernatural aspects. After reading that story I found that there are several islands in Japan called Cat Island, with unusually large populations of cats.

The last two stories in the book are about characters in a previous book by Hiro Arikawa, The Travelling Cat Chronicles, which I read in January. In that book, a cat is adopted by a man, Satoru, after he takes the cat in when it is hit by a car. He names the cat Nana, and they live together for five years. At that point, Satoru has to find a home for Nana. They travel to various parts of Japan to visit with several of Satoru's old friends to see if they can take the cat in. "Finding Hachi" is sort of a prequel to The Travelling Cat Chronicles, telling more about Satoru's first cat, Hachi, that he had for several years as a child. "Life Is Not Always Kind" tells about one more person in Satoru's earlier life that he and Nana visit on the trip. 

I liked this book a lot. I did not like all the stories equally, and there was one I did not care for, but it was very short. Most of the stories were between 40 to 50 pages in length. I am a cat lover; I don't think that is required to enjoy the book, but it certainly helps.