If Cats Disappeared From The World

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “A Short Introduction”

Writing what will later be revealed to be a letter to his estranged father, the unnamed protagonist, a postman, questions how the world and his own life would change if cats disappeared. If he himself were to disappear, then the world would continue on unchanged. The postman is dying, and has had a strange week. The postman promises that the letter will explain everything, and will be long because it is his first and final letter, as well as his last will and testament.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Monday: The Devil Makes His Appearance”

After two weeks of feeling increasingly unwell, the postman visits his doctor and learns that what he assumed to be a cold is actually a terminal brain tumor. He has a maximum of six months left to live, but the doctor says he’ll be lucky to survive the week. The postman imagines running from the doctor’s office screaming, colliding with passersby, and falling to his knees. In fact, he listens calmly as the doctor explains his options, feeling numb and as though he is underwater. Slowly returning home, he is irritated that the buskers on the street are wasting their lives and deeply sad that he is going to die prematurely at 30 years of age. He feels that he still has a lot of unfinished business. Upon arriving home, he collapses to the floor.

The postman is woken by the meowing of his pet cat, Cabbage, who has been living with him for the past four years since his mother’s death. He is also greeted by a cheerful doppelganger who introduces himself as the Devil. The Devil is wearing a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses, and shorts. This is despite the fact that it is very cold outside, and in stark opposition to the postman’s own conservative, monotone style. The Devil asks the postman what his plans are now that he knows he’s going to die soon. Inspired by a movie he once watched, the postman resolves to write a list of 10 things he wants to do before he dies. The Devil mocks him for being corny, but encourages him to do so nonetheless. The postman is deeply unsatisfied with his list. Most entries are unrealistic (for instance riding on a Transformer) or based on romantic tropes (like bumping into his childhood crush while sheltering from the rain). The postman feels depressed and pathetic as he writes, thinking that both the Devil and Cabbage are judging him. The Devil encourages him to go skydiving, the most attainable entry on the list, and accompanies him on the outing that very afternoon. Although the postman always assumed that skydiving would wildly change his perspective on life and the world, he is ultimately unmoved by the experience.

The postman wakes up with a painful headache to the meowing of his cat. He holds Cabbage in his arms and thinks that this is what life is truly all about. The Devil appears in another Hawaiian shirt, cheerful and laughing, and the postman nicknames him “Aloha” for his clothing. The postman is going to die tomorrow, but Aloha offers to use magic to increase the postman’s lifespan; each day he will remove one thing from the world, and in exchange the postman will get one more day of life.

Aloha gives a short overview of Christian mythology: God created the world in six days, rested on the seventh, and then made the first humans Adam and Eve to live in the Garden of Eden. Admiring God, the Devil decided to tempt humans to eat the Forbidden Fruit, which granted humans knowledge, but got them expelled from paradise into a world of death and suffering. God’s son Jesus was later sent to Earth and killed; however, humans continued to fill the world with more and more unnecessary objects. Now God has given Aloha leave to make deals with humans to get rid of things they don’t need in exchange for more life.

The postman is only the 108th person to whom the Devil has made this offer. The postman thinks that the offer is ridiculous, and that in his enthusiasm to conduct a deal Aloha sounds like a salesperson on the shopping channel. However, the postman then thinks of all the useless things in the world that he could sacrifice with no negative effects. By sacrificing enough things, he could live to age 70, or even further. He worries though that if he decides that so many things that humans make are unnecessary, he may have to conclude that the human race itself is also unnecessary, and that nothing at all matters.

The postman agrees to Aloha’s deal, but as he considers what he’ll eliminate first, Aloha stops him—it is the Devil who will get to decide what disappears. Glancing around the room, Aloha notices several packs of chocolate biscuits on the coffee table and proposes to get rid of chocolate. The postman considers all the varieties of chocolate, and is buoyed by the idea that humans have an insatiable desire for novelty. He agrees, and offers Aloha a biscuit. When Aloha discovers that he very much enjoys the taste, he changes his mind about getting rid of chocolate.

At this moment, the postman receives a phone call from his boss, and negotiates to take sick leave for the remainder of the week. Inspired by this, Aloha suddenly announces that the first thing he will get rid of is phones. The postman mulls over the benefits and drawbacks of telephones and mobile phone technology before agreeing, realizing as he does so that he hasn’t called his estranged father once in the four years since his mother died. Aloha allows the postman to make one final phone call. The postman considers calling his father or one of his friends, but instead he calls his first love, with whom he arranges to meet the following day. Returning, he finds the Devil playing with Cabbage. Embarrassed, Aloha quickly leaves, promising to return on the morrow.

Chapters 1-2 Analysis

The novel is written in the first person from the perspective of the novel’s unnamed protagonist, providing significant insight into his characterization and motivations, organically interspersing the events of the present with flashbacks, and allowing tangential ruminations that provide context or further illumination of the situations and the characters at hand. First-person narration, alongside the novel’s informal, somewhat stream-of-consciousness style, creates immediacy; readers encounter the protagonist without the mediation of another narrative voice. This connection is further strengthened by the narrative conceit of framing the novel as a letter written by the postman to his estranged father. Certain passages are thus addressed to “you”—the father, but also the reader. As a consequence, the postman seems more relatable and sympathetic.

The major conflict of the novel—the dying postman’s deal with Aloha—firmly situates the novel within the genre of magical realism: The novel is set in a realistic version of present-day Japan, but includes fantastical elements that its characters do not perceive as unusual. The postman is an unremarkable everyman figure—a member of the growing demographic of socially isolated young professionals living in one-person households. His concerns and habits are familiar and recognizable; his challenges before his illness are mundane and common. Even the inciting incident of the novel—being diagnosed with a brain tumor—could conceivably happen to anyone. This realism is thrown on its head by the appearance of Aloha and the matter-of-fact introduction of the fantastical. The postman’s easy acceptance of his metaphysical visitor seamlessly blends the believable and the supernatural. The postman’s understated reaction to Aloha’s appearance also echoes his outwardly calm reaction to news of his impending death, and creates a light humorous tone over an undercurrent of tension. At the same time, the postman’s everyman status makes his ruminations on which objects to sacrifice bring realism into the most magical aspect of the novel; his discussions of the wastefulness of human creativity versus the importance of the connection and distance brought about by technological advancement bring out the theme of Valuing Objects, Relationships, and the Everyday.

However, the novel’s framing as a letter creates ambiguity. It is left deliberately unclear whether Aloha’s appearance, bargain, and the resulting developments truly happen or are a fiction designed by the postman to convey to his father the psychological and moral turmoil he has faced when grappling with his impending death. Alternatively, Aloha and his magic could be a hallucination produced by the postman’s neurological condition. This possibility, as well as the omnipresence of death in the narrative launches Coming to Terms with Death as a central theme. Even if Aloha is real within the world of the novel, his precise role as the Devil of Christian theology, as well as his true motivations in offering his bargain to the postman, are left open to interpretation. This ambiguity is also characteristic of the magical realism genre, which typically leaves its absurd or fantastical elements unexplained. Readers are encouraged to contemplate the novel’s themes through potential allegory, something which here is also encouraged by the author’s frequent use of rhetorical questions.

The author reveals plot points and significant elements of the novel piecemeal, often alluding to an important character, event, or memory that will only explained or explored fully later. For instance, in these chapters the postman references his mother’s illness and death, which will later be described in detailed flashbacks. He also phones his ex-girlfriend in this chapter, although her identity and relationship to the postman will only be revealed in a future chapter. Such hints and obfuscations create tension and drama, and also allow for the narrative to move swiftly through action and developing conflicts without being bogged down with exposition.

Aloha’s personality and attitude are established in these chapters; he is a relatively flat character who does not change noticeably through the rest of the novel. The static nature of Aloha is logical, given the postman’s limited understanding of him and the Devil’s identity as the personification of a religious concept. The character of the postman does develop over the course of the novel, changing as a result of his experiences and growing understanding. For these changes to be apparent, the postman is first presented in the early stages of grieving his terminal diagnosis, feeling denial and frustration, as well as a deep fear of death and a willingness to go to almost any length to prolong his life. The postman is also isolated, as clearly illustrated by his inability to pick anyone from his contacts with whom to share a meaningful final phone call. His love for his cat Cabbage is apparent, but he has not yet come to terms with the loss of his mother. The retrospective outlook of the postman’s narrative voice already hints at the changes that he will undergo through the course of the novel.