If Cats Disappeared from the World unfolds in a quiet, contemporary Japan where one man’s impending death turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. A tiny circle of family, first love, and a mischievous tempter pushes him to weigh what should remain in a world built from everyday joys. As memories surface and bargains are struck, each relationship becomes a mirror reflecting what a meaningful life might be.
Main Characters
The Narrator
The Narrator is a reserved, 30-year-old postman whose humdrum routines and monochrome tastes mask a life stalled by apathy and regret. Facing a terminal diagnosis, he accepts a surreal bargain from his own grinning double that trades extra days for the erasure of ordinary things, a premise that sends him spiraling through memories of phones, movies, and clocks. As he revisits his bonds with his cat, his mother, his father, and his first love, he learns to recognize love in quiet gestures and to reclaim the small beauties he once overlooked. Choosing to protect what makes life tender—rather than extend a life emptied of it—he rejects the final, cruelest bargain and meets death with gratitude. His journey is explored in the Full Book Summary.
The Devil (Aloha)
The Devil (Aloha) appears as the narrator’s mirror image in loud Hawaiian shirts, a breezy, teasing foil whose cheerful cruelty sets the story’s terms. Offering a day of life in exchange for erasing something from the world, he catalyzes the plot and needles the protagonist’s conscience, a presence first detailed in the Chapter 1-2 Summary. He delights in the transactional and superficial, yet his banter reveals unsettling truths: he is the embodiment of the life the protagonist never lived—bold, careless, and unburdened by attachment. Static by design, he exists to tempt, to mock, and finally to clarify what loss would make life not worth winning.
Supporting Characters
Cabbage
Cabbage is the narrator’s cat and a living thread tying him to his late mother, embodying the quiet companionship that gives texture to everyday life. During the events of the Chapter 5-6 Summary, he briefly speaks with a dignified, slightly haughty flair, urging his owner toward life and love. As the final stake in the bargain, his existence crystallizes the story’s central question: what is a longer life worth if it costs the very love that makes it livable?
The Mother
The Mother is gone when the novel begins, but her warmth and practical wisdom suffuse the narrator’s memories and choices. She believed in a kind of equivalent exchange—life’s balance of loss and gain—that guides her son even in her absence, culminating in a final letter shared in the Chapter 7 Summary. Through her bond with her family and with her son’s first love, she models the tenderness and resilience the narrator must reclaim.
The Ex-Girlfriend
The Ex-Girlfriend—the narrator’s first love and a passionate cinephile—returns in his final week to probe the fault lines of their past. Honest and perceptive, she forces him to confront how small evasions and unspoken fears undercut their relationship, particularly in memories tied to phones and movies. By carrying his mother’s last letter and insisting on hard truths, she becomes the bridge between love remembered and love understood.
The Father
The Father, a stoic clockmaker, communicates affection through meticulous work rather than words, a habit that hardened into estrangement after his wife’s death. He stands as the narrator’s most painful unresolved bond, a reminder that time kept and time shared are not the same. Moving toward forgiveness—and learning to read love in silence—becomes the son’s final act of acceptance.
Minor Characters
- Lettuce: The family’s first cat, rescued by the mother; his illness and passing foreshadow later losses and teach the household how love and grief complete one another.
- Tsutaya: A movie-mad friend from junior high who works at a video store; his ardor for cinema helps the narrator choose a last film and celebrates the passion that art can kindle.
- Tom: A traveler the narrator and his first love meet in Buenos Aires; his sudden death exposes life’s fragility and hastens the unraveling of their relationship.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
At the core is the son–parent triad: the narrator, his mother, and his father. The mother’s warmth and philosophy give the narrator a language for love and loss, while the father’s taciturn devotion—expressed in clocks, not confessions—forces the son to recognize care where words fail. Reconciling these two legacies allows him to accept that love is often practical, quiet, and easy to miss until it’s gone.
The first love rekindles the past to illuminate the present. With the ex-girlfriend, shared memories of phones, films, and travel reveal how small acts of withdrawal can corrode intimacy, yet they also show how memory preserves meaning after romance fades. Her delivery of the mother’s final letter entwines two bonds—family and first love—so the narrator can read his life compassionately rather than regretfully.
The story’s catalyst is the narrator’s smirking double, whose bargains expose what seems trivial until it vanishes. Erasing phones, movies, and clocks strips away conveniences and comforts to reveal what remains indispensable: the relationships that give shape to time. Against this pressure stands Cabbage, the plain, everyday love that anchors the narrator to the world; choosing the cat over an extra day reframes victory as the courage to lose well.
Around the edges, Lettuce, Tsutaya, and Tom deepen the emotional map. Lettuce’s arc foreshadows the family’s later griefs; Tsutaya’s exuberant cinephilia models devotion without regret; Tom’s death reminds the lovers—and the reader—that meaning often arrives only when time feels shortest. Together these connections form a web where each strand tugs the narrator toward a simple truth: a life’s value is measured not by its length, but by the love it holds.