There are presences in our lives that do not announce themselves with quiet insistence. My first encounter with such a presence came when I was ten, a cat who wandered into our home and our lives. She stayed as though she had always belonged until one long vacation. When we returned, she had vanished without any farewell.
Since I became a pet parent to Coco, our English retriever, I have turned into a dog person. Yet I find myself drawn back to cats – not in life, but in literature. Bookstores, in particular, seem to understand this companionship well. There is something about a cat among books that feels as though stories require a silent witness.
In Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, this companionship takes on a luminous, almost mystical quality. Under the glow of a full moon, a café appears in Kyoto, unfixed in place, unbound by time, and run entirely by cats. Those who stumble into the café are often at crossroads in their lives, and in the company of these feline hosts, they are softly, almost imperceptibly reminded that purpose is something we are always rediscovering.
Few writers have captured the spirit of cats with as much tenderness as Ursula K Le Guin. Her work, Ursula K Le Guin’s Book of Cats, is not merely a tribute but a meditation. Through poems, sketches, and reflections, she invites us to see cats not as companions we own, but as beings we coexist with – teachers, even. In her world, a cat does not seek your attention; it allows you the privilege of its presence.
This idea of companionship – unassuming yet transformative – finds a moving expression in The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa. Nana, with his crooked tail (a subtle sign of fortune), travels across Japan with his human, Satoru. Told through Nana’s perceptive and often wry voice, the story starts with a series of visits to old friends that unfolds into a journey on spaces in between destinations, where love, memory and loss gently reveal themselves.
Then there is the story of a small-town library in Iowa and a kitten who found his way into its return box on a freezing night. Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron chronicles the life of Dewey, a cat who became, quite unexpectedly, the heart of a community. In a place defined by routine, Dewey introduced something rarer – a shared sense of warmth.
Long before these contemporary tales, Natsume Soseki offered us a different kind of feline voice in I Am a Cat. Written in the early twentieth century, the novel is a sharp, satirical observation of human society told through the detached, amused gaze of a nameless cat. It is both humorous and unsettling, for in the cat’s shrewd judgments we often find uncomfortable truths about ourselves.
Closer home, in the labyrinthine lanes of Delhi, Nilanjana Roy brings to life an entire feline cosmos in The Wildings. Here, cats are not mere observers but protagonists of a parallel world – complex, political and vibrantly alive. They move through the old quarters of Nizamuddin with a sense of purpose that mirrors, and sometimes mocks, our own. They speak in ways we cannot hear, see what we often miss, and remind us that there are entire universes unfolding just beyond our notice.
Perhaps that is what draws us, again and again, to cats in literature. They do not seek to dominate the narrative; they inhabit it. In their observant way, they reveal the subtle textures of life, the pauses between actions, the silences between words. And maybe, in the end, that is why they remain. Not as pets we remember, but as presences we continue to feel – soft-footed, unhurried and enduring.
(The writer’s views are personal)
