Sometimes a simple story, gently told, can touch you in a way that lingers long after you’ve finished reading. Such a story is ‘The Travelling Cat Chronicles’, a beautifully written novel by Hiro Arikawa exploring the friendship between Nana the street cat and the kind-hearted Satoru Miyawaki.

The journey in the novel is a universal one of friendship, love and loss. Although the narrator is Nana, we learn of Satoru’s young life, his challenges and the value of friendship.

There is one instance in the novel where Nana visits a household which has an old-fashioned cathode-ray tube television and he is impressed by the ‘box’ that makes his ‘tummy feel toasty’. He bemoans the fact that his television is ‘thin and flat like a board’.  I can remember a friend’s cat who always lay on top of their old-style television. He was a friendly cat who obviously had designated the top of the television as his territory. One day he vomited up a fur ball which fell through the grooves in the back of the television causing the screen to go blank. Unfazed by this occurrence, the family patiently waited until the fur ball dried out inside the television, knowing that as soon as this happened the television would work again, and it did. It was interesting that if one of the children had done this, they would have received a telling off, but because it was the cat, all was forgiven.

In the novel, Nana is completely loyal to Satoru saying, ‘For ever and ever I am your cat.’  If you have ever taken in an elderly stray cat you will know the truth of this statement. I discovered an old white cat hiding in my back garden over a period of days. After taking her to the vet to see if she had an owner (she was unregistered), having the vet sort out her health issues (a costly exercise), I registered her as my own and adopted her. I named her Googles because she was cross eyed and although she was appreciative of me feeding her and looking after her, I could tell that she was missing the person that she loved, her owner.

This novel isn’t just for animal lovers, it’s the story of life with all its complications and regrets, and the joy that can be experienced just from living each day as it comes.