If Cats Disappeared from the World

If Cats Disappeared from the World: A Novel

By: Genki Kawamura / Narrated By: Brian Nishii

Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins

Awwwww! Toooo bad! I already listened to The Travelling Cat Chronicles… tsk, tsk!

Really, boo hoo!

I dunno. Maybe if we hadn’t listened to The Travelling Cat Chronicles, our little audiobook club wouldn’t have found If Cats Disappeared from the World so pathetic, so distasteful. This is supposedly an “international phenomenon” but I really don’t see how. What is it, you ask?

Well, a young man, a postman, is dying, and suddenly the Devil shows up to strike bargains: He can get rid of ooooone thing in the world each day, so he can live another single day. Okay, so that gives us opportunities galore for the listener to hear deep and philosophical musings about the meaning of each thing that disappears from the world (And trust me, NOTHING is shown; EVERYTHING is TOLD to you in black and white terms).

Which is pathetic because what is SHOWN is that the postman is actually a self-absorbed creep of a dude. The Devil says Give Up Movies, and that’s totally okay to our hero—never mind the fact that movies are the absolutely most important thing in the world to a woman he used to care deeply about. So Screw Her!

The Devil says Give Up Clocks, and that’s also totally okay to our hero—never mind the fact that his father is a fixer of timepieces, so Clocks are absolutely the most important thing in the world to his dad. So Screw Him!

And by the way, the story chronicles the death of our hero’s mother and the rift he’s had with his dad, which was the saddest part of the book. It’s OBVIOUS that Dad is showing extraordinary amounts of Love in the only way he knows how, but it’s not the way our hero would have it, so he’s totally okay with NEVER seeing his father again, with slighting him at every turn, with lambasting him with every malevolent thought. The only lump in my throat came at the end, and I do believe it had more to do with my liking the dad rather than the postman.

Also, Brian Nishii’s narration is quite suspect. He has rather brittle tones, and when Cabbage, the cat, starts speaking with a British accent, Nishii just makes him sound weird. His female voice is weird. His Devil’s voice is weird. Weird, weird, weird.

Totally.

When we get to the Devil demanding that cats be given up, Kawamura’s writing of Cabbage has been so lackluster, so unloving, that I, an avowed lover of animals, couldn’t have given less of a rat’s patoot. But it’s an opportunity to wax ultra-poetic about warm and fuzzies, so I s’pose we’re supposed to care buttloads.

Unfortunately, I didn’t. Plus it should’ve ended a chapter earlier cuz that’s where the lump in my throat came, and everything that follows is simply more of being beaten over the head with black and white words, words, words. And anyway, it should end earlier cuz I said so, and it’s all about meeeeeeeeee!!!

So anyway, The Travelling Cat Chronicles was Life, Love, Death, and the Beloved, as seen through the eyes of a cat, and If Cats Disappeared from the World is supposed to be all of the above as seen through the eyes of an EXCEEDINGLY FLAWED CREEP insofar as he learns it from his cat. Sort of. Or something like it.

The novel comes in at just under 5 hours, and that was stilllllll tooooo loooong! As the audiobook tells us, life is too short and important to use it on such as this.

I want my 5 hours back!

And I want Kawamura to actually take the time to get to know a real cat cuz they sure aren’t the jerks that Cabbage is.

Harsh, maybe; but there you go…