Reading Murakami has greatly improved my relationship with my cat.
We no longer argue for separate territories on the sofa or give each other the evil eye, let alone feign ignorance of each other’s existence.
In fact, over these past few months our understanding of each other has grown ten-fold. We sometimes sit down next to each other and I find myself telling him about my problems, all of them; and sometimes I even bother sitting down on the kitchen floor to feed him. He would come and bite my arm as I lie around the house reading – more Murakami, naturally – and plop himself next to me; like an old friend.
In fact, I no longer feel threatened by my cat, and all past fantasies of stabbing him repeatedly with the kitchen knife – out of annoyance – have completely left me.
Murakami has probably done for the understanding of the feline race as much as what Simone de Beauvoir has done for feminism. While “The Second Sex” was a catalytic work of literature that inspired millions of women to take charge of their own sexuality; Haruki Murakami and his prolific of short-stories and novels have made millions of us literature reading humans realize that cats are not mere creatures who eat fish and sleep in our beds. Amongst other things, his books have made us aware that cats understand fields of meteorology that humans are unbeknownst to and that the feline form is able to comprehend much more about socioeconomics and politics than we are aware of.
Quite similar to how my ongoing delay in reading anything by Germaine Greer on the subject of feminism; I have yet to read Nastume SÅseki’s “I Am A Cat”, and of this I am quite ashamed.
Rest assured, all intention of obtaining a copy is still existent and going strong, as is all determination to further understand the intellectual sentiments of my cat.
Ask yourself a question my friends, are YOU suffering from a bad case of miscommunication between you and your cat? Do you silence your qualms and worries about each other by merely feeding your partner (read: cat) an extra portion of tuna rather than address the situation at hand?
Then read something, anything by Haruki Murakami; and save your relationship with your cat.