Hiro Arikawa: The Travelling Cat Chronicles

‘I’m proud of you, remembering me like that.’

Cats don’t cry like humans do. But – somehow – I sort of understood why he was weeping.

So you’ll do something to help, won’t you? I can’t stand the pain much longer.

‘There, there. You’ll be okay, cat.’

The man laid me gently in a cardboard box lined with a fluffy towel and placed me in the front seat of the silver van.

We headed for the vet’s clinic. That’s like the worst place ever for me, so I’d rather not talk about it.

I ended up staying with the man until my wounds healed. He lived alone in his apartment and everything was neat and tidy. He set out a litter tray for me in the changing area beside the bath, and bowls of food and water in the kitchen.

Despite appearances, I’m a pretty intelligent, well-mannered cat, and I worked out how to use the toilet right away and never once soiled the floor. Tell me not to sharpen my claws on certain places, and I refrain. The walls and door frames were forbidden so I used the furniture and rug for claw-sharpening. I mean, he never specifically mentioned that the furniture and the rug were off limits. (Admittedly, he did look a little put out at first, but I’m the kind of cat who can pick up on things, sniff out what’s absolutely forbidden, and what isn’t. The furniture and the rug weren’t absolutely off limits, is what I’m saying.)

I think it took about two months to get the stitches out and for the bone to heal. During that time, I found out the man’s name. Satoru Miyawaki.

Satoru kept calling me things like ‘You’, or ‘Cat’ or ‘Mr Cat’ – whatever he felt like at the time. Which is understandable, since I didn’t have a name at this point.

And even if I had had a name, Satoru didn’t understand my language, so I wouldn’t have been able to tell him. It’s kind of inconvenient that humans only understand each other. Did you know that animals are much more multilingual?

Whenever I wanted to go outside, Satoru would frown and try to convince me that I shouldn’t.

‘If you go out, you might never come back. Just be patient, little cat. Wait until you’re completely better. You don’t want to have stitches in your leg for the rest of your life, do you?’

By this time, I was able to walk a little, though it still hurt, but seeing how put out Satoru looked, I endured house confinement for those two months, and I figured there were benefits. It wouldn’t do to be dragging my leg if a rival cat and I got into a scrap.

So I stayed put until my wound was at long last totally healed.

Satoru always used to stop me at the front door with a worried look, but now I stood there, meowing to be let out. Thank you for all you’ve done. I will be forever grateful. I wish you lifelong happiness, even if you never leave me another titbit beneath that silver van.

Satoru didn’t look worried so much as forlorn. The same way he seemed about the furniture and the rug. It’s not totally off limits, but still… That sort of expression.

‘Do you still prefer to live outside?’

Hang on now – enough with the teary face. You look like that, you’ll start making me feel sad that I’m leaving.

And then, out of the blue: ‘Listen, Cat, I was wondering if you would become my cat.’

I had never considered this as an option. Being a dyed-in-the-wool stray, the thought of being someone’s pet had never crossed my mind.

My idea was to let him look after me until I recovered, but I’d always planned to leave once my wound was healed. Let me rephrase that. I thought I had to leave.

As long as I was leaving, it would be a lot more dignified to slip out on my own rather than have someone shoo me away. Cats are proud creatures, after all.

If you wanted me to be your pet cat, then, well, you should have said so earlier.

I slipped out of the door that Satoru had reluctantly opened. Then I turned around and gave him a meow.

Come on.

For a human, Satoru had a good intuitive sense of cat language and seemed to understand what I was saying. He looked puzzled for a moment, then followed me outside.

It was a bright, moonlit night, and the town lay still and quiet.

I leapt on to the bonnet of the silver van, thrilled to have regained the ability to jump, and then back on to the ground, where I rolled and scratched for a bit.

A car drove by and my tail shot up, the fear of being hit again ingrained in me now. Before I knew it, I was hiding behind Satoru’s trousered legs, and he was gazing down at me, smiling.

I made one round of the neighbourhood with Satoru before returning to the apartment building. Outside the door of the stairway to the apartment on the second floor, I meowed. Open up.

I looked up at Satoru and saw he was smiling, but again in that tearful way.

‘So you do want to come back, eh, Mr Cat?’

Right. Yeah. So open up.

‘So you’ll be my cat?’

Okay. But sometimes let’s go out for a walk.

And so I became Satoru’s cat.

‘When I was a child, I had a cat that looked just like you.’

Satoru brought a photo album out of the cupboard.

‘See?’

The album was full of photos of a cat. I know what they call people like this. Cat fanatics .

The cat in the photos did indeed resemble me. Both of us had an almost all-white body, the only spots of colour being on our face and tail. Two on our face; our tails black and bent. The only difference was in the angle of our bent tails. The tabby spots on our faces, though, were exactly alike.

‘The two spots on its forehead were angled downwards, like the Chinese character hachi – eight – so I named him Hachi.’

If that’s how he comes up with names, what on earth is he going to choose for me?

After hachi comes kyu – nine. What if he picked that?

‘How about Nana?’

What? He’s subtracting? I didn’t see that coming.

‘It hooks in the opposite direction from Hachi’s, and from the top it looks like nana – the number seven.’

He seemed to be talking about my tail now.

Now wait just a second. Isn’t Nana a girl’s name? I’m a fully fledged, hot-blooded male. In what universe does that make sense?

‘You’re okay with that, aren’t you, Nana? It’s a lucky name – Lucky Seven and all that.’

I meowed, and Satoru squinted and tickled me under my chin.

‘Do you like the name?’

Nope! But, well. Asking that while stroking my chin is playing foul. I purred in spite of myself.

‘So you like it. Great.’

I told you already – I do not.

In the end, I missed my chance to undo the mistake (I mean, what’s a cat going to do? The guy was petting me the whole time), and that’s how I ended up being Nana.

‘We’ll have to move, won’t we?’

His landlord didn’t allow pets in the apartment, but he’d made an exception for me, just until I got back on my paws.

So Satoru moved with me to a new place in the same town. Going to all that trouble to move just for the sake of one cat – well, maybe I shouldn’t say this, being a cat myself, but that was one fired-up cat lover.

And so began our new life together. Satoru was the perfect roommate for a cat, and I was the perfect roommate for a human.

We’ve got along really well, these past five years.

AS A CAT, I was now in the prime of life, and as Satoru was a little over thirty, I guess he was, too.

One day, Satoru patted my head apologetically.

‘Nana, I’m sorry.’

It’s okay, it’s okay. No worries.