(read at Pindari cabin, Yeranda Cottages, Dungog, 2-9 January 2024)
he world, it is often observed (accurately or not) into two groups – dog people or cat people.
You are, it is opined one or the other, and thus shall you will for the rest of your life.
Regardless of how true it is across the board, the fact remains that, usually, if you like cates, you LOVE cats and you will both put up with a great deal from these gloriously contrary creatures – and for the record, this reviewer, while he likes dogs, is most assuredly in the feline camp – and love them for their affection, their cuddly idiosyncrasies and the great joy they often bring to your life.
In his new novel, The Goodbye Cat, translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel, Hero Arikawa evokes in a series of short but potently emotional stories why it is we who love cats do love them, and how even those of indifferent or outright antagonisational position often come to appreciate something about these affectionately wilful animals that often change their lives.
The first story, titled The Goodbye Cat manages to be simultaneously soul ripping out sad and whimsically lovely as it takes us through the life of one cat named Kota who, rescued from certain death as a kitten by a man who takes him home to his family, decides that he loves his human mother, father and two brothers so much that they must find a way to be with them in death.
Sometimes Kaori wondered what would have happened if Keisuke hadn’t rescued Spin that day.
The inside of the Mikkabi tangerine box. What was observed was a live cat whose sibling had just passed away. Perhaps also notable was what would happen to the very observer whose life was touched by that very cat.
He has a lot of time to think about as he lives to the ripe old age of 24, which gives him and the other resident cat, Diana, plenty of time, though she sadly dies well before him, too come up with a way to become a spirit cat or nekomata.
Dear sweet devoted Kota, who is most closely attached to the youngest son in the family, Hiromi, becomes convinced he has a found a way to make the seemingly possible, and while you know his scheme likely won’t be successful, watching him pour his heart and soul into making it happen, all while his human family loves just as fiercely right back, is a thing of unparalleled joy.
That joy, and it must be said, a great deal of sadness, continues all the way through all the stories which serve up ,life, death, devotion, and belonging on a grand movingly feline scale, reminding us at every turn how unconditional love from a cat can be.
Cats, rather erroneously in this reviewer’s opinion, are dismissed all too often as lacking love and devotion but if you’re a long-time cat owner – haha jokes on you; the cat, most definitely, OWNS YOU … but you knew that, right? – you will know that simply isn’t true.
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
Arikawa knows it intimately, of course, and each of the stories profoundly and affectingly rebuke that false positioning of cats as the unloving pets of the domestic world.
Take the two interlinked stories that finish off this beautiful collection.
“Finding Hachi” and “Love is not Always Kind” feature one young man named Satoru who goes through a great deal of loss and grief through a young but thankfully cat-filled life.
In these two beautifully alive and deeply moving stories, we see how much of a difference the cats in Satoru’s life make to him and how in a world that often visits a great deal of pain and loss at out feet, we also see much happiness and love too.
While cats aren’t responsible for all that sense of self and belonging – Arikawa is adept at exploring how deep human love can go and how much it matters to all of us – they do actually contribute far more than their detractors admit, all of it written as a love letter to feline devotion in The Goodbye Cat.
I stretched my neck forwards and licked around Satoru’s eyes. My tongue tasted a slight saltiness.
‘Nana, that hurts,’ Satoru said, pressing his fingers on my whiskers to push me away.
Now what kind of response was that?
And if you’re not entirely convinced that cats do make the world go round, then read “Bringing Up Baby”, where one socially inept young father finds unexpected parental inspiration in a cat that arrives at the same time as his daughter (to his wife’s shock and surprise), and “Good Father, Bad Father” which shows how deep-seated anti-cat feeling can change over time into something that, while not love, is not even close to the antagonism of all.
In all these stories what emerges most strongly is how cats can trigger all kinds of experiences that might not otherwise have happened simply because they open us up as people.
This reviewer witnessed with his own much-loved father, who has now passed, who went from not exactly anti-cat but definitely indifferent to their presence to someone who lived and breathed looking after the cats that gave him so much love and companionship.
It’s a beautiful unconditional transaction and Arikawa captures it with so much heart and joy and affecting accuracy in The Goodbye Cat that you will often gasp at how authentic his depictions of having a cat in your life are and how well we understands that two-way love that drives these relationships, and that cats, far from being unfeeling, capricious monsters, as they sadly often maligned, are the catalyst for considerable love, joy and happiness and an enriching of life that makes a real difference to everyone, feline and human all.