In the much-anticipated follow-up to the bestselling and beloved The Travelling Cat Chronicles , seven cats weave their way through their owners’ lives, climbing, comforting, nestling, and sometimes just tripping everyone up in this uplifting collection of tales by international bestselling author Hiro Arikawa .
Against the backdrop of changing seasons in Japan, we meet Spin, a kitten rescued from the recycling bin, whose playful nature and simple needs teach an anxious father how to parent his own human baby; a colony of wild cats on a popular holiday island show a young boy not to stand in nature’s way; a family is perplexed by their cat’s undying devotion to their charismatic but uncaring father; a woman curses how her cat will not stop visiting her at night; and an elderly cat hatches a plan to pass into the next world as a spirit so that he and his owner may be in each other’s lives forever.
Bursting with love and warmth, The Goodbye Cat exquisitely explores the cycle of life, from birth to death—as each of the seven stories explores how, in different ways, the steadiness and devotion of a well-loved cat never lets us down. A huge bestseller in Japan, this magical book is a joyous celebration of the wondrousness of cats and why we choose to share our lives with them.
- Title: The Goodbye Cat
- Author: Hiro Arikawa (Translated by: Philip Gabriel)
- Publisher: Berkley
- Publication Date: October 10, 2023
- Genre: Short stories
- Source: Gifted through publisher
- Targeted Age Range: Adult/YA/NA/etc.
- Content Warnings: death, car accident, death of a parent, animal death
- Rating: ★★★★★
I read The Traveling Cat Chronicles a few years ago, and was pretty mixed on it — One of my former coworkers loved it, and we have very different reading preferences, so I figured I wouldn’t love it the way that she had. That being said, I was really excited when I received a gifted copy of The Goodbye Cat, another book by the same author, from Berkley Publishing, as I wanted to give Hiro Arikawa a second chance.
A short story collection that follows several different cats — some from their perspective, some from the perspectives of a human being, The Goodbye Cat is equally heart-wrenching and bittersweet. From the very first story, I was teary eyed, and it just kept going from there. The stores in The Goodbye Cat are centered around love and loss, spanning through all the different stages of life. Not for the first time, The Goodbye Cat made me wonder about what life must be like for our pets, and what goes on in their minds.
Like all short story collections, there were some stories that I loved more than others, and would happily read a novella or even a full-length novel of, and there were also some that I simply didn’t care about. In particular, my favorites were The Goodbye Cat, Cat Island, and Finding Hachi. The Goodbye Cat follows two cats, Kota, and Diana, as they embark on a mission to become nekomatas, so they can forever watch over the boys of the family. Cat Island had a more fantasy element to it, focusing on a boy, his father, and his stepmother, as they visit Cat Island, and he meets an old lady who tells him a tale about his family. The last two stories — Finding Hachi and Life Is Not Always Kind — were prequels to the events of The Traveling Cat Chronicles, and I do think that if I’d read the two shorts prior to reading The Traveling Cat Chronicles, I would find The Traveling Cat Chronicles more enjoyable. I think the reason I struggled with The Traveling Cat Chronicles was that I didn’t feel like I knew the characters well enough when events started really unfolding, but I very quickly knew exactly how the story was going to go and it felt a bit too predictable.
Overall, I highly recommend checking out The Goodbye Cat, but make sure you have a box of tissues next to you. As stated above, it does deal with themes of death (both human, and pet loss), among other things, so please take care of yourself and read with caution.
Links for The Goodbye Cat: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop.org
