The Goodbye Cat A small dish of soy sauce sat on the dining table. A couple of grains of rice floated in it, left over from breakfast, no doubt. The dining table was covered by a light blue tablecloth printed with a random pattern of small flowers. Kota Sakuraba placed a palm into the soy sauce, then pushed it firmly onto the tablecloth, being careful to avoid the flowers. He left his palm there for a bit, then lifted it to reveal a small, soy sauce-colored plum blossom print. Not bad, not bad at all. Gazing at his work, Kota again dipped his palm in the soy sauce. Then again, and again. More and more soy sauce-colored plum flowers bloomed on the blue cloth. I'm in the zone today. He was about to make a fifth and a sixth print when- "Hiromi! Stop that!" Mom scolded. Damn, I'm busted, thought Kota, ears pinned back against his head. And then- "Did I do something?" It was Hiromi, in the hallway, peeking uncertainly into the living room. He was the Sakuraba family's second son. Kota was the Sakurabas' third-eldest son-scratch that, cat-but Kota considered himself the second eldest, with Hiromi as the third in line. "Goodness," Mom said, seeing Hiromi in the doorway. She burst out laughing. "Sorry! I'm wrong. It's Kota. He's being an artist again." That's what the Sakuraba family called it when Kota made his little paw prints: he was being an artist. Kota found this hard to fathom, since it wasn't like he was painting a picture. "You're at it again, eh?" Hiromi said, coming over and giving Kota a gentle flick of the finger on his forehead. "Please don't do that, Kota," Mom said. "Our tablecloths have your paw prints all over them." She grabbed Kota under his belly, and wiped his soy-soaked paw vigorously with a damp dishcloth. Kota didn't like feeling wet, and so he quickly withdrew his paw and began to lick it. "Hey, Mom, I wanted to say the same thing to you: please don't do that. I don't like these false accusations." "Ah, sorry. It just came out. I never make that mistake with Masahiro." The mistake Mom always made was to mix up Hiromi's and Kota's names. She never called Masahiro, who was Hiromi's elder brother, Kota by mistake. All three shared the same Chinese character in their written names, though in Kota's case, it was pronounced differently. "Well, it seems like it's the youngest child's fate to be confused with the family cat." "Really?" asked Mom. "I looked into it," said Hiromi. "My friends and I talked about it at school. The ones that get called the wrong name are all the youngest in the family." "Well, what do you know," Mom said as she attempted to scrub away Kota's paw prints from the tablecloth. "Masahiro's left home, hasn't he? So if I'm going to mistake anyone's name, Hiromi, you're the only one still around." "What do you mean?" Hiromi shot back with a smile. "You've been doing it since I was a kid. Mistaking me and Kota." Mom just laughed it off. "I'm going to have to wash this," she said, folding her arms and looking disapprovingly at the tablecloth. "How did Kota learn to do that naughty trick, anyway?" she wondered aloud. Mom's familiar response, to which Kota wrinkled his nose. That is no naughty trick. It's a dry run. Kota was honing his skills at making paw prints, readying himself for when the time came. C His earliest memory was of being terribly cold. During the rainy season twenty years ago, for whatever reason his mother had left him behind. His eyes still hadn't fully opened. Crawling out of the space behind a wall where they'd been sleeping, he searched everywhere for the mother cat's warmth. Instead, he was hit by drops of cold, drizzly rain. In the normal course of things he would have passed away soon after that if he had not been rescued by the father of the Sakuraba family. The Sakurabas already had a cat: a Persian with an abnormality in its iris that meant the pet shop was about to get rid of it. Mr. Sakuraba had rescued this cat, too. He was the kind of person who, if he crossed paths with a cat in trouble, could not simply walk on by. So you are one lucky cat, the Persian, named Diana, said, as she let the motherless kitten suck at her teats. Mr. Sakuraba, rather clumsily, often fed him milk, but the need to suck at a warm body with arms and legs like his mother's could not be met by a plastic bottle. "I want to give him milk, too!" their son, Masahiro, whined. Diana told the kitten that a human sibling was on its way, and that Masahiro would become an older brother. The pregnant human was in the hospital, she added. "No. It's too tricky for you to feed him, Masahiro-I'll do it." This was true, because once when Masahiro tried to feed him a bottle of milk, he stuck the teat so far down the kitten's throat, he coughed for hours afterward. Apparently while the father was out during the day, he'd asked Mrs. Sakuraba's friends, women from the neighborhood, to look after him. He'd been drinking milk every three hours, which became every five hours and then three times a day, by which time the kitten's eyes had fully opened. It was the day that Mrs. Sakuraba and her new baby, their second son, came home from the hospital. "Whoa, he looks like a monkey! What a weird face!" Masahiro yelled when he came back from kindergarten, earning a slap from his mother. Diana, though, was inclined to agree with him. You looked just like a monkey yourself, she thought. Mrs. Sakuraba had really been looking forward to seeing the kitten her husband had rescued while she was at the hospital. After putting the new baby to sleep, she came over to take a proper look. "My, what a beautiful silver tabby!" This was the moment the kitten first learned what his fur color was called. "Have you decided on a name yet?" "Not yet," Mr. Sakuraba said a bit evasively. "But hasn't it been two weeks since you found him?" "I wasn't sure we were going to keep him, and if we give him a name, then we'll get attached." Mr. Sakuraba had planned to wait until his wife was back before making a decision about keeping him. But she had no qualms at all. "Let's adopt him," she said. "The kitten seems to get on well with Diana, too," she added. "You're such a sweet cat now, aren't you, Diana?" The Persian cat puffed up with pride. "So, what shall we call him?" "We need to name the baby first." A family had to register a baby's name with the city hall within two weeks, and so Mr. and Mrs. Sakuraba had been discussing the matter of the baby's name for quite a while. As the older boy's name was Masahiro, the one thing they'd agreed on was that the new baby's name should contain the same character, hiro. Mr. Sakuraba decided on the name Hiromi, while his wife, after much deliberation, wanted Kota-the ko being another reading of the character hiro. Neither would back down, and so finally they did rock-paper-scissors to reach a decision. Mr. Sakuraba won. Mrs. Sakuraba seemed quite disappointed. "Hiromi . . . isn't a bad choice, but won't people mistake it for a girl's name? I still think Kota might be better." "No complaints, please. We voted on it, fair and square. If you like the name Kota so much, why don't we call the kitten that?" And that's how he came to be named Kota. By the time little Kota was scampering around the house, baby Hiromi still had not learned to roll over. All he could do was shuffle his arms and legs around while swaddled in a blanket. Do you think he's okay? Kota asked worriedly, but Diana reassured him. Don't worry, he'll be fine. Masahiro had been exactly the same, according to her. Humans took longer to grow up than cats. Even so, it seemed to be taking a very long time. Kota often went to check out little Hiromi as he lay squirming around like a caterpillar. Wonder if today's the day he'll stand up, thought Kota, fixing him with a good long stare. Nope, he's still a caterpillar. Hurry up and learn to stand. If your mother abandons you, then what? Kota suddenly remembered that his mother had left him behind because he had been such a weak kitten with extremely wobbly hind legs. One day, as he was nervously scanning Hiromi's sleeping face, the baby's eyes popped wide open. No one had been able to tell if the baby could actually see anything much, but now those unseeing dark eyes seemed to be focusing at last. And then he gave a little laugh. Mrs. Sakuraba came scurrying over. "I hope you're not trying to bite him," she said. That's pretty rude, Kota thought, and was about to stalk off, when Hiromi suddenly burst into a loud wailing. "Hmm . . . Do you want Kota to stay?" Mrs. Sakuraba patted Kota on the head, and put her hands together in apology. "I'm sorry. And here you were getting along so nicely." Ah well, she's the mom, so best to cut her some slack. Kota nestled down beside the baby's pillow and Hiromi was now all smiles and contented gurgling. "Isn't that nice, that Kota wants to have a cuddle with you?" With a heart-melting smile, Mrs. Sakuraba poked at Hiromi's cheeks, and then gave Kota's throat a fond scratch. Ah, I get it. From the way Mom is smiling, it doesn't look like she's going to get rid of this caterpillar anytime soon. All's well that ends well, Kota thought, giving Hiromi's milky-scented forehead a good lick, thus provoking another happy gurgle of laughter. Kota began to nestle beside Hiromi every day, until Hiromi learned to roll over and around, then to crawl, then to stand on his own two feet, and finally to walk. Before you knew it, he was racing around the house like a member of some infant biker gang. He fell down a lot, though, and bumped into things, his motor skills still only half developed. Meanwhile, Kota was fast growing into a full-fledged adult cat. Humans really do grow up so slowly, he lamented. You're right, agreed Diana. By the time the baby reaches Masahiro's age, you could have become an adult five times over. When Kota was still a kitten, Masahiro had looked huge to him, but now he seemed like some young kid. The fusuma sliding doors were by this time completely in shreds. They could repaper them all they wanted, but they still ended up in tatters. Mrs. Sakuraba decided to let them stay ripped. "We have two gangsters in our house," she complained. This was about the time Hiromi was starting kindergarten and Masahiro had gone up to elementary school. Masahiro was more often now referred to as the onee-san-the older brother. Most of the time it was when he was being scolded: "You're the onee-san, so you should behave yourself." Masahiro would come back with a sullen, "I hate being the onee-san." "You never tell Hiromi to behave. It's not fair!" he'd protest. His parents had to admit he had a point. "Okay, so let's make Hiromi an onee-san, too," Mrs. Sakuraba proposed. "But Hiromi doesn't have a younger brother." Masahiro was pouting again. "No, but he does have Kota," Mrs. Sakuraba said with a smile. What? Just a second! Now it was Kota who was getting flustered. I'm the older brother, actually. I was born first, and besides, I'm already an adult. But Kota could protest all day-humans couldn't understand cat talk. "Hiromi, you can be Kota's big brother, can't you?" "You bet!" You bet wrong there, little man. But this cat protest, too, was completely ignored. You'd best give it up. Humans only understand their own language, Diana said. "So you'd better set a good example as an older brother for Kota," said Mr. Sakuraba. Kota dropped his eyes and sat belly down on the floor. When it comes to walking, running, jumping, even grooming, a kid like Hiromi has absolutely nothing to teach me. "Before we have dinner, I'd like the two of you to clean up the room, okay? You're both older brothers now, after all." "Okaay," the two boys answered, a more docile response than usual, and began to gather up the toys and picture books that lay scattered across the floor. This is how Kota became the third son-cat-in the family hierarchy, even though by any measure nothing could have been further from the truth. C But now, years later, Hiromi had grown properly big, Kota thought as he gazed up from where he sat at his feet. Hiromi had got up late this morning, but still did not seem to be in a hurry. Hiromi had grown taller than Mr. Sakuraba, even taller than Masahiro. "Morning!" Hiromi greeted his mom, who immediately shot back with, "Took your time getting up, that's for sure." Hiromi shrugged. Being a college student seemed a pretty leisurely occupation. Hiromi gave Kota's head a good pat as he passed by on his way to the fridge. He took out a carton of milk and started to glug it down. "Don't drink directly from the carton!" "But I'm going to finish it." Hiromi drained the milk, rinsed out the carton in the sink and dropped it in the recycling bin. Aha! As Hiromi was crouched down arranging items in the recycling bin, Kota, who had been sprawling on the sofa, suddenly saw his chance. He shot over to him and scrambled up Hiromi's back. "OUCH!!" By the time Hiromi had let out this overblown yell, Kota was already at his shoulders. "You scratched my back with your claws, Kota!" But I have to bare them-how else can I get a grip? Kota now had a good purchase on Hiromi's shoulders and was gazing down, his face inscrutable. Mrs. Sakuraba, who had been riffling through the morning mail at the dining table, looked over and giggled. "He's never satisfied until he's climbed on top of your shoulders at least once a day." "Kota has been doing that since he was little. Though it used to be Dad he preferred to climb." No, you've got that all wrong. Kota stuck out a paw on the back of Hiromi's neck. Since he was little. Kota had not been little at all. Only Hiromi and Masahiro had been little at the time. When he'd started to climb up Dad's back, he was already an adult. Excerpted from The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
