I am a Cat

A nameless cat enters a quiet household and quickly discovers that humans are far stranger than they imagine themselves to be. From his privileged place beneath tables, beside books, and in the corners of everyday life, he watches his schoolteacher master and an endless procession of friends, intellectuals, dreamers, bores, and eccentrics. Nothing escapes his judgment. Human vanity, ambition, romance, education, social status, and fashionable ideas are all subjected to his dry, merciless wit. First published in the early twentieth century, Natsume Sōseki’s *I Am a Cat* is both a brilliantly comic novel and a sharp portrait of a society in transition. Its feline narrator moves effortlessly between domestic observation, philosophical reflection, literary parody, and satire, exposing the contradictions of modern life from a perspective at once detached, curious, and wonderfully self-important. Funny, intelligent, and unexpectedly modern, *I Am a Cat* remains one of the most distinctive works of Japanese literature—a classic for readers of literary fiction, satire, Japanese culture, and novels with unforgettable narrators.