I am a cat and as yet I have no name". A perfect sentence to start the chronicle of an unwanted kitten narrating his life in the household of a Japanese teacher in the Meiji Era (early 1900’s). I am a cat by Soseki Natusme is a humorous satire on the upper middle class, academics and aesthetes. The text originally appeared as a series of 10 articles in a Japanese magazine, and the book is a collection of these articles divided in 3 parts.

The observations on humans and their peculiarities as seen by a cat make this book very humours. If you own a cat you’ll appreciate how the cat describes his superiority to mere humans. The importance of sleep, scratching, and the overall owning of the place are just some of the opinions this highly observant cat has to offer. The flowery language the cat uses in his descriptions and the archaic and bombastic tones in the conversations between people are one of the most pleasant aspects of the book.

I found the first two sections of the book to be very enjoyable, however in the last part I admit that I lost my interest and started skipping some conversations between the main characters. They seemed to become quite long winded and uninteresting towards the end as well as a bit inconclusive.

Even though the book was written in the early 1900 in Japan, and classified as literature, I found the book easy to follow and enjoyable. I highly recommend the book to any cat lover or cat owner. However if you’re totally indifferent to cats, academic snobs, and character based books I don’t think this book has much to offer for you. 4/5 stars.