Cats

Cats in the novel are not merely a single recurring animal presence: Ernest and The Cat meet Ove at different points in his life and draw out different forms of his attachment. His distrustful opinions give way not to a sudden conversion but to accommodation, responsibility, and, finally, the quiet companionship of an animal that remains beside him when he dies.

Ernest and Ove’s Suspicion

Ove’s dislike of cats is presented as a settled conviction. He regards them as untrustworthy, and Ernest’s extraordinary size intensifies his suspicion: the animal seems to him less like a large cat than a small lion. Ove even reasons that befriending a creature that might eat him in his sleep would be unwise. The comic excess of the comparison conveys his wary habit of treating affection as a risk to be assessed.

Ernest belongs to Sonja’s world, and her unconditional love for the cat makes Ove keep his judgments to himself. He understands what it is to receive her love when other people fail to see why he is worthy of it; he therefore knows better than to speak badly of what she loves. He and Ernest manage to get along, though the account describes their arrangement more as keeping their distance than as a close friendship. Ove once sits on Ernest’s tail and is bitten. The incident leaves the wary balance between them intact, while showing that Ove’s consideration for Sonja shapes how he behaves toward an animal he does not understand or particularly like.

The Stray in the Snow

Years later, Ove’s encounter with The Cat begins with a hole shaped like a cat in the snowdrift beside his shed. He has just watched an Audi drive away and has turned back toward home with one hand pressed to his chest, furious at his breathlessness and racing heart. At the bottom of the hole is a cat. The matter arrives not as a chosen act of companionship but as an unwanted responsibility Ove cannot ignore.

The chapter framing makes Ove’s resistance explicit: after spending much of the previous day telling Parvaneh that the cat would live in his house over his dead body, he stands looking at it while it looks back. The blunt standoff echoes his initial certainty about cats, but the certainty is already under pressure from the animal’s immediate need. He takes in the freezing stray, and the language of annoyance continues even as his actions contradict his declared refusal. The contrast is central to the novel’s portrayal of Ove: care appears first as something he does, not as a feeling he readily names.

Companionship and a Changed Routine

The Cat becomes part of Ove’s daily life without erasing his brusque manner. In the garage, he sits in his Saab with the engine running and exhaust filling the space, considering death as the only logical end to the grief he feels for Sonja. The cat is with him, its breathing audible beside the engine’s rhythmic stutter. Ove looks at it and turns off the engine. The reversal is small in outward action but decisive in consequence: the animal’s presence interrupts a suicide attempt, and the next morning they rise early, drink coffee and tuna respectively, and go on an inspection round.

Their shared routine gives the companionship a practical form. Ove shovels snow outside his house after their morning inspection; the cat is not described as curing his grief, and his longing for Sonja remains acute. Instead, its presence gives him another living being to attend to and makes his choices consequential to someone beyond himself. The scene also repeats a broader pattern in his story: Ove resists the language of tenderness, while ordinary acts of care bind him to others.

A Gesture Repeated at the End

At Sonja’s grave, Ove kneels in the snow, brushes more from the gravestone, and carefully lays a hand on it. He whispers that he misses her. The Cat gently rests its head in the palm of his hand. The gesture does not replace Sonja or resolve Ove’s bereavement; it places the cat beside him at a moment when grief has become visible in his touch and speech.

Nearly four years after Parvaneh and Patrick backed a trailer into Ove’s mailbox, Parvaneh notices one icy November morning that the snow outside Ove’s house has not been cleared. She finds him apparently sleeping peacefully, with The Cat at his side and its head resting in the palm of his hand. The image recalls the earlier moment at the grave, but now Ove is dead. The cat then slowly gets up and climbs into Parvaneh’s lap, joining the human who has come to discover his death. Across these scenes, feline presence is more than a device for softening Ove: the animal moves through the household, interrupts his isolation, and remains close to him at the end. Its repeated, physical gestures give shape to a bond that Ove’s own guarded language could scarcely describe.