Translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel
Published by Doubleday, 2017, 247 pages. Original version published in 2012.

Nana is a cat. He was once a stray cat with no name, sleeping on the bonnet of a silver van, made “warm and toasty” by the sun.

But when Nana is hit by a car, the owner of the silver van, Saturo, takes care of Nana until he is well. Saturo then asks Nana if he would be his cat. Eventually, Nana agrees. In case you’re wondering, animals are multilingual across species, unlike people who only understand human languages.

Saturo, however, seems to understand Nana instinctively, and the two of them become friends. Everything seems to be going well until Saturo starts to contact his childhood friends to see if they will take care of Nana, whom he will not be able to keep for reasons that he does not want to disclose.

So Saturo and Nana take off, driving around Japan to see his friends and family: Kosuke, who runs his father’s photo studio; Yoshimine, a farmer; Sugi and his wife Chikako, who run a hotel where pets are allowed; and his aunt Noriko, who took him in when both his parents were killed in an accident. With each visit, you learn a bit more about Saturo and his past—and why he wants someone to take care of Nana.

The book is partly narrated by Nana, who is a delight: wise, observant and caustic, a cat who is clearly not easily impressed, but who is devoted to his human friend. His voice is captured beautifully in Philip Gabriel’s translation. I loved this cat—he can be perceptive about humans, although he doesn’t really think much of them: “huge monkeys that walk upright, but they can be pretty full of themselves”. I enjoyed seeing the world from a cat’s perspective (and was jealous of his ability to understand other species, something I have dreamed of doing ever since I saw the film Doctor Doolittle as a child).

Hiro Arikawa tells the story with humour and compassion. It is a must for anyone who has loved a cat. This is a gentle, lovely book about friendship and the things that really matter in life.