If Cats Disappeared from the World

Written by Genki Kawamura

Originally published in 2012

~202 pages

Rate 5/5

A short yet impactful story about a man's last days on earth as he experiences a prolonged game of "would you rather" with the devil..

The "would you rather" propositions the main character was faced with made me reflect and question my own reality and daily decisions. As the story progresses, the whole world is impacted unknowingly by the main character's decisions while the main character sees the short-term effects of his choices. He begins to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of even the smallest of objects/ideas.

Readers never get to find out the main character's name, he is merely defined by how he decides to spend his last days on earth. At times the verbiage felt too juvenile considering the narrator is in his 30s, but I'm not sure if that's because of the way it was translated. That's the only compliant I really had about the book.

There were many excellent quotes that stuck out to me while I read this book. Here are a handful of them:

"Perhaps that’s what drives all human progress: an insatiable desire for new things."

"It would have been nice to have taken the time to listen to what was going on in the other one’s head, to understand each other’s feelings."

"I must have a whole collection of small injuries, tucked away somewhere in the recesses of my memory. I suppose those are what some people call regrets."

"Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who has changed, and seeing the same film again makes that impossible to forget."

"My hope is that my life will go on to live in the memories of others who’ve witnessed my story."

"Human beings exchanged their freedom for the sense of security that comes from living by set rules and routines—despite knowing that they pay the cost of these rules and regulations with their freedom."

"You don’t have a family. You make a family."

"but when I think of all the things that I want to do before I die, they all involve you."

"I could never be happy in a world deprived of your existence."

"It is all those differences, however minuscule, that make up my existence."

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