"I am a cat. As yet I have no name."
I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa Neko de Aru) is a satirical novel written by Natsume Sōseki (the pen-name of Natsume Kin'nosuke), which first appeared in ten installments in the literary magazine Hototogisu ("Cuckoo") between 1905 and 1906. Soseki had not intended to write more than a short story but it was so popular that he expanded it to fill a whole book. It is the chronicle of an unloved, unwanted, wandering cat who spends all his time observing humans, from his schoolteacher master, his servant, his horrible children, and more.
Examples:
- Anyone Can Die: The deaths aren't common, but nobody's safe. Not even the cat.
- Butt-Monkey: Chinno Susami, or "Mr. Sneaze" as he's known in some translations, the English teacher who took the cat in, is shockingly incompetent at nearly everything he attempts to do.
- Downer Ending: By the final chapter, practically not a single character has a better life than they had at the start of the story. The cat proceeds to get drunk and subsequently drowns in a water basin.
- Dub Name Change: The second English translation gives the main characters English names that are supposed to mirror the meaning and/or the feel of the original Japanese names. Kumumaya no Kuro, literally "Richshaw Owner's Black (cat)", becomes the somewhat questionable "Rickshaw Blacky", to use one example.
- Expository Pronoun: One of the most famous examples in Japanese literature − the cat uses the noble pronoun "wagahai", which comically contrasts his not-so-noble position. Thanks to Pop-Cultural Osmosis, it's become very heavily associated with anthropomorphic cats.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: One of the first things the cat tells us of was how a student catches, boils and eats cats. It doesn't get much better from there when he tries to sneak into the school-teacher's house and repeatedly gets thrown out by the maid. The children spend a lot of their time torturing the poor thing.
- No Name Given: The cat is never named at any point in the story, and resolves to be a nameless cat for the remainder of his days early on, though he is given the nickname "Professor" by a fellow cat otherwise, in reference to his master.
- Self-Deprecation: The cat has nearly nothing but a laundry list of negative things to say about his master the English teacher, a fairly blatant caricature of the author himself.
- Shout-Out: Two of them in the first chapter to contemporary literary magazines Hototogisu and (now defunct) Myōjō – the master tries to send his works to these magazines in one of his stints at trying various crafts.
- Stray Animal Story: An early example. The story is about the life of a wandering cat.
- Wise Beyond His Years: The cat, in everything from its erudite language to its observations on human culture.
