19 pages of cats + 6 photos of cats = 500 posts

Kawamura on the Shore
(a/n: loosely based in the same world as Kafka on the Shore, so it probably helps to have read that first)

Kawamura was a cat (he was what you called a striped brown cat). He liked to nap in warm places, and he also liked chasing tails, especially the wormy ones on mice or the fluffy ones on pretty tabby cats. He wasn’t a rich cat like those other cats who napped on verandas. The veranda cats often insisted, in those summery evenings after particularly exquisite tuna suppers, that they were very, very, very rich cats. That’s how Kawamura knew he wasn’t a rich cat—because he didn’t have supper on verandas, which sounded like a very grand and very lonely thing to do.

The veranda conversations drifted into his head with the night air. Usually the other cats talked about their generous masters, but sometimes they also mentioned slices of spicy tuna. Kawamura didn’t have a master, but he liked tuna very much. He also wasn’t sure what a veranda was. It sounded warm and friendly. When he screwed up his whiskers and thought very hard, he could sometimes imagine his veranda. He thought that it might be a place with mice, or maybe somewhere with a pool of warm sunlight. There would be a pretty female cat or two, with graceful tails and long white whiskers. They meowed pleasantly in his head.

“K’wamura,” interrupted a mewling voice. “K’wamura, tuna’s tied.”

Kawamura raised his head a fraction of an inch and met the eyes of a small, one-eared kitten. It was Toro, a small black cat with impeccable hearing. He was standing on a fallen tree trunk, staring down Kawamura’s nose and mewing in distress.

“Kawamura doesn’t understand Toro. Did Toro hear something?”

Toro jumped down nimbly from the tree trunk and circled Kawamura twice. “Tuna’s tied. K’wamura, hurry. Tuna’s tied and Mikeko’s tied.”

“Mikeko?” Mikeko was the pretty tabby cat who lived nearby in a 3-chome apartment. She had a tail that looked like puffy, water-blown bird. Kawamura had once shamelessly chased her around the neighborhood circuit, but he couldn’t help it, not really.

Toro padded off into the darkness, lashing his tail for Kawamura to follow. Kawamura followed.

~*~

A summer ago, the humans built a plywood fence around an empty lot and hammered a sign saying KEEP OUT: SITE OF FUTURE CONSTRUCTION (which Kawamura, naturally, couldn’t read) onto the padlocked gate. Ever since then, the place settled into a forgotten, sleepy silence—the type of silence that cats are very fond of. Kawamura liked the little plot of land. There was a half-constructed stone wall where he could sit and bask in the sunlight, and there were little clumps of grass and goldenrod where the mice and crickets lived.

Kawamura found himself alone in the empty lot. Toro had disappeared. Behind him, the plywood fence gleamed in the urban orange of a streetlight. Kawamura didn’t breathe. The crickets were silent. For a moment, the world stops and spins into a single frame, and Kawamura feels sick and doesn’t remember if he is supposed to breathe or live. There is no time to think.

And that’s when he sees Mikeko. She’s rolling on her back, batting at a piece of tuna that’s magically floating in the air. Kawamura feels hungry, insatiably and utterly hungry. He’s entranced, but Kawamura sees it now. The tuna isn’t floating in mid-air. It’s dangling on a string. There’s a puppeteer that you can’t even see, and your tuna is only a doll in this short-lived performance…

When cats scream, it is a gutturally shrill wrenching of the vocal cords, a last-ditch mechanism to call for the sympathy of anything living or breathing. It is a universal call, one that cats, crickets, and humans all understand.

Mikeko screams. It is a cat’s scream. She’s rising into the air. She’s flying. And then, without a word, she disappears forever. It’s a magic show, but instead of rabbits and hats, there’s a grinning, pink-faced human child with a large, quivering bag. Kawamura is frozen to this frame, this time. The world’s already stopped for so long that he can’t remember what it was like to be a cat, what it was like to scream.

Kawamura screamed.

~*~

Mimi, a Siamese housecat who Kawamura met under an awning on a cool afternoon, once said that “nothing could be worse for a cat than to be stuffed inside a bag.” At that time, Kawamura thought that there were many things that were worse, like death or starvation or catfights, or even dogs. But then, Kawamura remembered how her primly groomed coat had had an unhealthy sheen of moisture. In the coolness of that afternoon, Mimi had been sweating through every pore.

~*~

Kawamura was floating in a pleasant dream. His dreams were always very pleasant. Whenever he lay down on the grass and closed his eyes, he always disappeared into a floating space somewhere above his head. Sometimes, he left the floating space and became a giant, silvery bird that swooped across the sky. No cats could bully him now. No children could, either. He flew and he flew, and the empty lots and sunny places looked very small from above. He cast a giant, bird-shaped shadow on the ground. It looked deliciously filling. Kawamura enjoyed the shadow-bird’s sharp outline and full contours. Below him, his own belly burgeoned into a silver balloon as if he had eaten a very large tuna dinner. The funny thing was, you couldn’t see how big Kawamura’s belly was by looking at its shadow. But it was larger than anything Kawamura had ever seen, and it was growing.

Kawamura’s belly growled.

“Hey, Kawamura—”

“He’s coming around—”

“You hungry, Kawamura?”

Kawamura found himself staring into an open blue sky. The veranda cats were gathered around him. A few looked concerned, and the rest looked bored or sleepy. A grey tortoiseshell named Noriko butted her head against Kawamura until he lay flat on his stomach. He was still in the empty lot. Mikeko was gone.

“Kawamura has been sleeping for a very long time, haven’t I?”

“Yes,” said Noriko. “We found you here, lying dead as a stone. Didn’t even purr one bit, even though you were dreaming.” She paused to stare at a passing butterfly. Together, they watched it float by on the wind.

Kawamura pictured a floating piece of tuna. His stomach churned.

Noriko looked suspicious. “You know, Mikeko hasn’t been around for at least a week.”

“Kawamura’s very sorry. Kawamura will try to purr next time.”

“I almost forgot,” Noriko sighed. “You’re that idiot cat.”

The other veranda cats had wandered away by now. Kawamura was about to wander towards them, when Noriko added, “—at any rate, you’ve been sleeping here for a week.”

Kawamura nodded. “Kawamura saw a silver bird in his nap—no, Kawamura was the silver bird—”

Noriko slapped Kawamura mercilessly. “Mikeko. What happened?”

“Mikeko is the tabby cat, with the fluffy tail,” Kawamura explained. “Kawamura chased her around the neighborhood, but I didn’t mean to.”

“Did you see anything suspicious before your nap? Think. You’re a cat, you see things and hear things that others don’t. You have ears, don’t you? You have eyes, don’t you?” She punctuated each question with swift blows to Kawamura’s ears and face.

Kawamura didn’t remember. He thought he had seen a piece of tuna floating in mid-air, but who would believe him? Kawamura was the slowest, dumbest cat in the neighborhood. Ever since he hit his head as a kitten, Kawamura couldn’t do things right anymore. He never purred when he napped and he couldn’t catch anything but the fattest and dumbest mice. He always dreamt about being a bird, instead of eating the bird. Sometimes, Kawamura did not feel like much of a cat.

“Kawamura’s very sorry. Kawamura can’t remember very well, you see…”

The veranda cats were playing in the fading sunlight. Butterflies circled the goldenrod, and cricket legs sang out, hidden in clumps of wild grass.

“…but I think she was stuffed in a bag.”

The veranda cats stopped playing. For long seconds, no one dared to even purr.

At length, Noriko lashed her tail heatedly. “A bag? Are you sure?”

“Kawamura remembers,” Kawamura said slowly. “Mikeko was floating, like a butterfly, and then she disappeared into a brown bag. Then I fell asleep.”

The veranda cats were quiet.

“Cats don’t have that sort of memory,” Noriko said sharply. “What do you mean, Kawamura remembers? I remember today’s lunch, and maybe yesterday’s lunch. Nothing more, nothing less. We’re cats. We remember things like food, naps, and a good scratch. What’s this unnecessary talk of butterflies and bags?

“At any rate, I don’t really care about this shady business with Mikeko. That wasn’t what we wanted to ask you. One of the neighborhood cats—his name’s Toro, I believe—had a piece of delicious tuna dangling in his mouth the other day. As you know, well, everyone knows Toro’s a stray, an orphan. He couldn’t have gotten that tuna by the book.

“A few nights ago, we cornered him and questioned him. You know, roughed him up a bit, showed him that stealing from other cats’ masters isn’t right. He gave us your name. Kawamura. Kawamura, tuna, Kawamura, tuna, that’s all he would say. And Mikeko’s name. He mentioned Mikeko once or twice.

“Is it true, then? Where did the tuna come from? Did Mikeko find a new master? She’s never had tuna before. She’s only eaten nasty dry cat food and bird eggs. And where’s she been in the last seven days?”

Noriko stopped, her nose an inch away from Kawamura’s. She looked like she was trembling from a place deep inside her belly.

Kawamura didn’t respond. He wasn’t very smart, but he knew that these questions didn’t have answers.

“Besides, what’s so bad about a bag?” Noriko added, as if fueled by the rumble emanating from her belly. “It means Mikeko will be a queen of another home. 3-chome to 4, what’s the difference? She’s eating her fill of tuna, isn’t she?

“Bags don’t mean the same thing they used to. Sure, a year ago, a brown bag meant certain death for a cat. It was because the humans temporarily lost their sanity. They stopped fishing and hunting for food, started building warehouses instead, day in and day out. Even in Japan, people began to eat cats. Those were scary days. Cats like us, we didn’t stand a chance. We were too busy being sane and hunting for mice. You didn’t notice anything if you were hunting. It never occurs to you that there might be someone hunting you.

“But it’s different now. If someone bags you, it means they’re taking you to a nice home. Human children love cats. If you’re brown-bagged, you get a nice warm home and a tuna dinner, every night. No more of this mucking about in empty lots or itinerant verandas. You get a real veranda, one that’s there forever, and you get good things to eat.”

Noriko’s voice rose higher and higher until it disappeared into the evening air. The wordlessness congealed into a thick invisible wall between Kawamura and the rest of the world.

Noriko cleared her throat, hacking up a small, walnut-sized fur ball. “At any rate, you wouldn’t understand. I wouldn’t expect a homeless cat like you to understand. It’s a wonder that you even have a name.”

~*~

The striped brown cat once had a master, just like all the other neighborhood cats. It all began on a strange autumn afternoon, when the sun had flickered grey and stopped shining for one, indefinitely long second. It blinked out of the sky, and blinked back before anyone else could see. Now, the cat knew that clouds could sometimes cover the sun, but there were no clouds in the sky that day. The sun had flickered like a giant, faraway streetlamp. Immediately afterwards, the cat felt an irresistible urge to yawn. He yawned. He became so sleepy that he couldn’t think or walk in a straight line. He decided to take his afternoon nap earlier than usual, and dragged himself into the shaded porch of a nearby house.

It was then that he first saw his master.

The porch, unlike any other porch he had slept on, was enwreathed in pink and yellow chrysanthemums. He remembered how he buried his nose in the chrysanthemum flowers and immediately began to snore away, breathing the golden fragrance into his dreams. He did this five afternoons in a row, and when he saw a man putting down a saucer of milk on the sixth day, he claimed the owner of the house as his master.

His master was what you called a tanka poet. He did not see him often. Sometimes, through the thick glass of the window, he could see the outlines of a man buried in stacks of paper and books. It was a wonder that his master could unbury himself and pour him a saucer of milk every night.

“Hello, cat,” the poet said one night, pouring him another saucer of milk.

The striped brown cat lapped up his milk happily.

“Say, is it alright if master calls you Kawamura? Don’t worry—it’s just a name. It doesn’t mean anything. I’d like to call you that, as long as you don’t mind.”

Kawamura, in hindsight, recognized this as a lie. Humans don’t care about anything without a name. They never talk to nameless things, like rocks or stones, and they never go to nameless places, like the empty lot behind the playground. Yet, precisely because of this reason, the striped brown cat was glad that his master named him Kawamura. The striped brown cat called Kawamura began to brag to the veranda cats about his name and his master’s porch.

“Kawamura sleeps on a porch covered in lovely flowers. It’s like a carpet of petals and dreams.”

Noriko, the grey tortoiseshell, sniffed at this. “My veranda smells lightly of roses and parsnip.”

“And when Kawamura sleeps, I can see a very large house with many verandas. It’s covered with chrystanthemums. There are many happy cats there, bellies big and fat with tuna.”

The veranda cats, and now Kawamura, too, frequently engaged in these porch-side debates. The state of a master’s porch reflected greatly on the master’s cat. A poorly lit, rusty porch meant that you were a poor cat. A white veranda under the cherry blossoms meant that you were very, very rich. Each porch could only house one cat. Kawamura remembered how vicious he would become whenever intruders napped on his porch. He would be pleasantly napping in the sun one moment, and in the next he would find himself battering at a kitten’s face until it crawled away under the fence. Kawamura wasn’t himself, then, and he couldn’t help it, not really. He never understood what was happening until after it happened. But then it was too late. No use apologizing after the fact.

Kawamura was a very proud cat. His master was a man of letters and was very famous in the neighborhood for his intellect. As a result, the neighborhood cats gave him, Kawamura, grudging respect and distance. Sometimes, the porch-less cats brought him dead mice or birds as humble offerings. This stung Kawamura. They knew that Kawamura was too slow after his accident to catch his own mice. When he tried (and he tried very hard), he could only catch the oldest and fattest of mice. They were so sickly-looking that Kawamura felt sorry for them and carefully put them back where he found them.

It was then that Kawamura’s master went on a vacation. For many days, no one came outside to pour Kawamura his evening milk. Everyone knew something was wrong. The other cats began to titter in barely concealed whispers. But Kawamura waited patiently on the porch, patiently waiting for his master to return.

One cloudy day, when Kawamura dozed off into a pleasant golden dream, a strange man burst out of the house without warning, screaming and hitting Kawamura with the wooden handle of a broomstick: “Scram, you useless cat!”

Kawamura wanted to protest—his name was Kawamura, not cat—but humans were stupid and couldn’t understand very much. The other neighborhood cats now began talking in low, smug tones. The poet’s no-good cousin, a fruit-stand man, had moved into the house. The poet’s whereabouts were unknown.

~*~

A large, nameless place expanded before Kawamura’s eyes, blooming into a wide expanse of grey-red flatland. Kawamura had never seen anything so wide and flat. It was like one giant porch. There were no people, and almost no other cats. Warm, dancing fires dotted the flatland, some reaching the height of several small children. Kawamura spent a few minutes basking in the heat, licking the pink pads of his paws. When he bored of this diversion, he rose to his feet and circled the fires, watching the smoke stacks rise in soft O’s.

It was here that Kawamura met Mikeko.

“Kawamura, chasing someone’s tail really isn’t very polite, you know.”

“Good morning, Mikeko. Where did you come from?”

“Oh, here and there. Listen, Kawamura.” Mikeko looked very nervous. She had a new collar around her neck. When she trembled, a silver bell tinkled at her throat. “Please promise me that you’ll listen very carefully.”

Kawamura promised.

“With the way things are now,” she began, “there’s no place for cats in this world.” Mikeko sounded as if she had rehearsed this speech very carefully.

“You know how you dreamt about a large house with many verandas? It’s real. There was once a master there, a man of many letters and talents. He liked cats. He named cats, carefully and tenderly, as if they were his own children. The first,” she said, wonderingly, “was named Kawamura.”

The two cats paused and watches as another smoky O puffed away into the sky.

“At any rate, it wasn’t long before the master disappeared. It was as if someone shoved him in a bag and carried him far away. In present-day Japan, there are porches and verandas, and sometimes there are forgotten patches of the world where we can happily attend to our own matters. But nothing’s quite the same anymore.”

“What about this porch?” asked Kawamura, patting the ground with his forepaw.

“This porch? I’m afraid it’s not real. It doesn’t even have a name. It’s pitifully cut off from the rest of the world, don’t you think?”

“Kawamura doesn’t know what to think,” Kawamura said slowly, “but I suppose so…”

“You see, something went very wrong. There aren’t many porches left in the world. So maybe you’re thinking, I’m sitting on one right now…but it’s only a temporary solution. A waypoint. You can’t settle for something that’s not real. Well, you can, but you shouldn’t. We live in a world of unbroken violence and itinerant danger. We’re fooling ourselves if we think otherwise. If you understand that, then there’s just one more thing you need to understand.

“Now, listen carefully—when you wake up—wait! Don’t interrupt. When you wake up, look for a child with a top hat. Try not to forget.”

And then, with a soft tinkling of silver, Mikeko disappeared forever for the second and last time.

~*~

Kawamura decided that he was going to save Mikeko.

In order to save her, Kawamura first had to find Toro. Top hats and children aside, Kawamura had the feeling all along that Toro was the answer to Mikeko’s disappearance. Toro would know. He always knew more than he let on. Kittens were sometimes like that. Kawamura knew, because Kawamura sometimes pretended that he didn’t know anything (which, in fact, he often didn’t). He spent several afternoons asking around the neighborhood for sightings of Toro.

But no one seemed to know where Toro had gone after the veranda cats confiscated his tuna. Strangely enough, no one seemed to care once Toro lost his tuna. It was as if the tuna made the cat, and that once the tuna disappeared, Toro wasn’t Toro anymore.

While there was still enough light, Kawamura carefully combed through the playground, the dumpsters behind the apartments, and all of Toro’s favorite napping spaces. At night, Kawamura visited the vacant lot. Night after night, he crouched in a hidden, grassy corner where he would hold silent vigil until he was sleepy and bleary-eyed. Kawamura was vigilant. After all, Kawamura was a cat. Like Noriko said, cats could see and hear things that other creatures missed. For example, it was a widely known fact that cats were the only creatures in the world who could see in the dark and lick themselves clean.

But ever since his accident, Kawamura didn’t feel like he was a whole cat anymore. He couldn’t purr or trill like a normal cat. He also couldn’t catch mice. Sometimes (and he was very scared when this happened), he felt that he did not have full control of his tail.

Kawamura lashed his tail once for good measure. He closed his eyes and lay flat on the grass. Before long, he fell into a light sleep.

~*~

“Hey, you there. Striped brown cat.”

The striped brown cat looked up. Shino, an old cat who never moved from his high perch on his cherry tree, was the first cat to ever address him.

“I’ve been watching you,” said Shino. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

The striped brown cat scratched his chin.

“I recognized you immediately. You’re that pretty brown tortoiseshell’s bastard child, aren’t you? What was her name…Kameko, or something dreadfully ironic. Trite in the unique triteness that only a human child can manage when naming a cat.”

The cat yawned.

“You can’t purr, can you? I’ve heard the rumors. It’s a shame. Can you talk? I guess not. In time, I suspect you’ll be able to talk like a regular cat again. But that will come with time.”

The cat now looked genuinely interested.

“Well, it might be useless to say this now, but I know how you’ve gotten the way you are. It’s too late to do anything about it now, of course. Can’t change what already happened. No use apologizing, or getting angry. You see, I saw what happened. It didn’t make any sense, but things hardly make sense in this world.

“That day, there was a child riding a bicycle, and the sun was directly above him. But then the strangest thing happened. The sun blinked black in the sky. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It was as if it had disappeared, as if someone stole it and put it back before anyone found out. But they didn’t just steal it. They did something to it, they fundamentally altered its composition, or they replaced the sun with an inferior knock-off. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started rising in the west.

“Shortly afterwards, the child lost control of all his limbs. He was screaming and screaming, and the bigger humans burst outside screaming, too. They were too late. The bike rammed into your body, and your head hit the pavement with a thud. I thought you were a goner. Kameko cried and cried.”

Shino sighed, as if caught up in a faraway dream. “But I bet you don’t remember any of this.”

The striped brown cat scratched his chin.

~*~

Kawamura scratched his chin. The sky was darkening quickly. The butterflies of the empty lot folded up for the night, balancing on tips of goldenrod while they dreamed.

It turned out that no one knew anything about Toro’s whereabouts. It was like the time when Kawamura’s master disappeared into thin air. Maybe Toro was on a vacation, like his master. Good for Toro, but it wouldn’t solve any of Kawamura’s problems. Mikeko was still missing, and the child with the top hat was nowhere to be found.

In fact, Kawamura wasn’t really sure why he was looking for a child in the first place. Kawamura hated human children. Their faces were pink and hairless, and they constantly smelled wet. They were very ugly and they screamed for trivial things like fallen ice cream cones. Kawamura was not a mean cat, but he delighted in staring at children while he licked their ruined ice cream treats.

This was Kawamura’s fourteenth night in the vacant lot. By now, Kawamura was used to peculiarities of the place. From his hidden, grassy corner, he could watch all the other cats come in and out of the hole in the plywood fence. Noriko stopped by several times to relieve herself in the tall, overgrown section of grass in the corner.

At night, there were periods of noises and periods of silence. Throughout the night, more and more creatures left Kawamura’s world for their own dreams. When everyone but Kawamura fell asleep, the world would deaden into a thick silence. Kawamura would be afraid to breathe. Instead, he would sit, holding his breath and wondering if he had been transported somewhere else entirely.

On the fourteenth night, the world begins to deaden. Kawamura groans. Not again. The mice and crickets are all inexplicably asleep at the same time, and the butterflies have long since left this world. Kawamura is alone. He sees something floating in mid-air.

There is a piece of tuna floating in the air. Kawamura knows better. He doesn’t touch the tuna. But Toro is screaming, from a muffled, faraway place. Toro does not talk very often, let alone scream. Toro is in a bag, and there’s nothing worse for a cat than to be in a bag. There’s only one right thing to do. Kawamura jumps in mid-air…

…and the world blinks black. Kawamura swims in the darkness. He desperately squeezes a piece of old tuna in between his paws. It’s the only way he knows that he’s in the same world.

Kawamura is in a bag.

~*~

Kawamura misses his master. He misses the days on the porch, and the endless bowls of milk. He licks his lips, but his tongue won’t respond.

“He’s coming around—”

But doesn’t have a master, because he’s not a cat. He’s a silver bird in the sky. And his belly has been growing and growing all this time, so much that it hurts to fly.

Kawamura lets his bowels loose. Silver droppings fall from his anus. Kawamura feels a little empty, but all he can think of doing is eating again.

~*~

“Hey. You, Kawamura.”

“Kawamura is very sorry, Toro.”

“Toro? Listen, Kawamura. Wake up. You need to wake up.”

Kawamura opened his eyes.

He was inside a house. It was startlingly white, and it smelled of lemons and sake. A row of empty metal-wire cages lined the wall. So this is what it’s like to be bagged, Kawamura thought. But try as he might, Kawamura couldn’t see any loving children anywhere.

Then again, it was very hard to see with a fat, old cat sitting on top of him.

“Hello,” Kawamura gasped. “If it’s alright with you, can Kawamura call you by your name?”

The cat squinted at Kawamura. “I don’t have a name.” The cat lumbered away. Kawamura watched as he hopped effortlessly onto the top of a metal cage.

“Where are we, Mr. Cat?” asked Kawamura.

“This is what they call an animal shelter. And don’t call me Mr. Cat.” The cat closed his eyes and looked as if he was going to take a nap.

“An animal shelter?”

“They bag homeless animals off the streets and find them homes. You’re lucky that they don’t have any dogs here right now. A rather nasty dog named Ichi was here earlier, barking and foaming at the mouth like nobody’s business.”

“So is it...” Kawamura asked slowly, “something like a giant porch?”

“Just between you and me,” the cat said, opening one eye and closing it again, “it’s more like a waypoint. It’s not even that pleasant of a waypoint. You won’t find anything here. There aren’t any masters or delicious things to eat. There isn’t even a bathroom.”

“Why are you still here, then?”

“Don’t have anywhere else to go. I’m used to this life, and they haven’t gotten rid of me yet. Every so often, to clear space, they’ll try to stick me with the needle and put me to sleep forever, but I’m not ready for that world yet. There are still a couple of things to solve in this one.”

“Kawamura hasn’t had a master in a very long time, but Kawamura is still looking.”

“Good for Kawamura!” the cat exclaimed. “I’ve never had a master, so I wouldn’t really know. Although,” he paused thoughtfully, “I lived with a grouchy soldier, ten or fifteen years ago. He never gave me a name. I named him, though. Aiko! Cute, right? I could never stand for this naming business, anyway. Kawamura? Sounds like your master’s dilatory schoolfriend from primary school. Above all, you’ll need to make that name your own. Kawamura the cat, you know?”

“Kawamura understands, I think.”

“Good! Now, get out of here before they stick you with the needle. They do it on principle, you know. It’s because they follow rules, never mind the poor cat in question. They knocked out a little black kitten the other day, just because it was missing an ear. They make judgments, you know, these humans. Don’t have an ear? Marked for disposal. It’s a cruel, strange world.”

The cat sighed and fell asleep. Kawamura watched as the cat’s torso first rose, and then, seconds later, fell. Seconds gathered into minutes.

“It’s time for the story of Kawamura the cat, isn’t it? I’ve spent a little too long figuring that out. But Kawamura is a slow cat, so it’s only to be expected.”

Kawamura pressed a paw to the cat’s forepaw.

“Kawamura doesn’t have a master,” Kawamura finally said, “but Kawamura is still a cat. Cat doesn’t have a name, but he is still a cat. Thank you. Kawamura will remember.”

Then, Kawamura closed his eyes and began to float away. He became a silver bird, slipped through an open window, and disappeared from the white room forever. He flew over cities, great bodies of water, and the empty lot where Noriko was still bullying the other cats. When he passed Nagoya, he thought that he could see Mikeko napping on a chrysanthemum-enwreathed balcony.

But it didn’t matter. Kawamura didn’t stop to think. He was flying too fast now. Everything became a blur of blue-green. Everything, from the snowy-capped mountains to the cities that he had seen earlier, leveled out and unrolled before him. It was almost like one giant, endless porch.

And for the first time that he could remember, Kawamura felt like a cat.