My impression from reading on “I am a cat”
I read a book that’s famous in Japanese literature the book titled “I am a cat” was written by Souseki Natsume.
He is a distinguished person in the field of Japanese literature.
He is very famous and almost all Japanese people know his name.
This book, “I am a cat”, is one of his masterpieces.
This story is written from the point of view of a cat.
I think this idea is really unique, because it’s extremely unusual.
The main character is not a human but a cat.
When I read this story I almost feel like I’m a cat.
I have never imagined how cat might think of us.
This story starts from when the cat was found and taken home by a human.
The cat doesn’t have name, furthermore it doesn’t know where it was born.
The story follows cat’s daily life and what the cats thinks about its master and his family.
And it also talks about the cats community especially his friends, Mrs. White, Rickshaw Blacky, and Tortoiseshell.
Everybody’s situation is different.
I feel sorry for Mrs. White.
Her children were killed by a human.
When she had babies, the college student who lives at her place took those babies away, carried them to the little lake out back, and threw them all in.
I couldn’t stand it.
How could college student do that!
After I read this story, I realized humans can be very selfish.
I don’t want to say this because it’s kind of shameful but, I had similar experienced with someone who threw away the babies with the stray cat.
When I was 7 years old, there was one stray cat that lives in my family’s garden.
It wasn’t our pet but it lived in our garden.
We didn’t feed it.
And then, couple weeks later, we found the cat with 4 kittens in my garden.
I knew the cat had been pregnant and then had kittens.
My family love animals but we could not have any pets.
Because of our residential rule that said “No Pets”.
Additionally, if we kept a pet secretly, we would be charged with a rather expensive penalty fee.
Even if we liked the cat, we couldn’t get permission to have a pet in our apartment.
So my parents and I decided to bring them somewhere safe.
One night we brought them to temple near our house.
We didn’t want to but we had to.
This book reminds me of this bitter memory.
The message from this book seems to be “Not even humans can stay on top forever.
It’s best just to take things as they came, I say, and wait for the age of the Cat!”
I think humans are arrogant as the cat says.
Because we are at the top of the food chain, it’s time to think about other animal’s lives more carefully.
As matter of fact I read this story before, in Japanese, when I was junior high school student, but that book had a deferent ending.
The ending of this book is more positive.
The cat decides to live in the teacher’s house, even though he doesn’t have a name.
This ending shows a more positive outlook for his future.