Mornings With My Cat Mii
A beloved Japanese modern classic about our special connection with cats and how they can change our lives over the course of a lifetime
'Cat lovers, prepare to weep' The Times
'A cat classic' Catherine Lacey
'Profoundly real... and beautifully written' Elif Batuman
'Aglow with incidental joys' Rivka Galchen
On a cool summer evening in 1977, Mayumi Inaba hears a forlorn cry. She follows the sound to the banks of Tokyo’s Tamagawa River and finds a newborn kitten dangling from a fence, abandoned. Overcome by tender affection, she takes the cat back to the small apartment she shares with her husband and christens her Mii: so begins an unshakeable bond.
Over the next twenty years, we follow Inaba, a poet and novelist by moonlight, as she pursues quiet solitude and a room of her own. Through it all, Mii, a fiercely independent creature in her own right, is her confidante and muse.
This beloved Japanese modern classic is not just a love letter to companionship: it’s a poignant, searching meditation on the forces that enable us to connect, to create and to build a life.
‘Reveals the profound respect, and compassion, that a friendship with an animal can inspire’ Sigrid Nunez, New Yorker
Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
**Readers ADORE Mii**
‘A lovely little gem’
‘Gentle and enchanting and had me in floods by the end’
‘Absolutely beautiful'
‘Sweet and heartbreaking’
‘Told with grace, beauty and love’
Mayumi Inaba (Author)
Mayumi Inaba (1950–2014) was a Japanese writer, editor and poet. She made her debut in 1973 with the short story ‘The Pain of Blue Shadows’, and she went on to write many novels and collections for which she won several awards, including the Kawabata Yasunari Prize. She was awarded the Tanizaki Prize for To the Peninsula. Inaba was well known for her love of cats.
Ginny Tapley Takemori (Translator)
Ginny Tapley Takemori is an award-winning translator based in rural Japan. She has translated works by writers including Sayaka
Murata, Kyoko Nakajima, and Mayumi Inaba.