A real treat on yet another rainy Saturday! The stories are delightful, sad in places, but mostly full of the simple joys of being a cat. There’s also Jon the all-knowing guardian dog who shares his wisdom and knowledge in a saint-like manner.

Most of the women are young artists, but the last woman is a widow. Some of the cats are kittens, some are feral. The stories alternate between the cat’s point of view and the human one. In each of the stories – Sea of Words, First Blossoming, Slumber and Sky and The Temperature of the World – four cats (who are either related or friends) are adopted by lonely women. Whoever you are tk, I love your work! Each one complemented the story so perfectly that I found myself going back to each one several times to check out the various details as the story unfolded. The 2022 English translation includes four chapter illustrations at the beginning of each one. The closest I could work out is that he (in his role as an anime screen writer) may have contributed towards turning Shinkai’s original five minute anime into the longer form TV series, which included the other three stories now also in this collection. I’m not really sure how Naruki Nagakawa features in all of this. He described it as ‘ the relationship between a male cat and his female owner told from the cat’s perspective.’ In 2016 it was adapted into an anime TV series as well as a manga version drawn by Tsubasa Yamaguchi. She and Her Cat began life as a five minute 1999 anime by Makoto Shinkai. Judging by my success with this one, the other four are sure to appear here soon!)įirst up, I should declare that I am a cat person, and I am very fond of the Japanese fascination with cats in literature.

(The other four books to soothe a battered soul are Banana Yoshimoto’s new book of stories, Dead-End Memories, Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi (already on my TBR), Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada and Idol, Burning by Rin Usami. My soul was not feeling particularly battered (except for this seemingly endless La Niña rain!) but I definitely felt soothed after reading these four short interconnected cat stories. One of the online sites that came up when I duck, duck, go’d this title, suggested She and Her Cat was one of the five translated books this season that could soothe a battered soul.

Tsubasa yamaguchi she and her cat