The Travelling Cat Chronicles

by Hiro Arikawa

he’d often be woken in the early hours by four feet clomping over him. Feeling the weight of a cat’s paws pressing into your shoulders in the middle of the night – not much beats that.

You’ve had a much, much harder life than I have, yet you’ve always remained generous and kind. You blow me away. I’ve always wanted to be more like you. If only I could be.

I mean, who in the world came up with the idea of floating a huge lump of iron on top of water? Must have had a couple of screws loose, whoever it was. It stands to reason that a heavy object will sink. No other animal in the world would try to defy the laws of nature, but humans are a very peculiar species.

‘It looks just like the sea.’ He was talking about the pampas grass which spread out along both sides of the road. Its white ears covered the flat, sprawling fields from one end to the other, and swayed in the wind like white, cresting waves.

Satoru told me what everything was called. And that the mountain-ash berries are bright red. I remember some expert on TV saying once, ‘Cats have a hard time distinguishing the colour red.’ ‘Wow! Would you look at how red those berries are!’ Satoru called out, and that’s how I learned about the colour red. It no doubt appeared differently to Satoru, but I learned how what Satoru called red appeared to me. ‘The ones over there aren’t so red yet.’ Every time he saw trees through the window, Satoru would talk to me about them. So I became quite skilled at discriminating between different shades of red. I just learned to distinguish, in my own way of seeing things, the variations of red that Satoru pointed out, but also that they did all indeed share the same colour. For the rest of my life, I would remember all the shades of red Satoru mentioned that day.

He pressed me close in his thin arms, unable to speak. I purred till my throat hurt, rubbing the top of my head over and over against his body.