Disappearance of Noboru Wataya (Cat)

The cat’s return ends a disappearance that has lasted almost a year, but it does not explain where he went or why he came back. Instead, his arrival gives Toru a small, tangible living presence to care for: after feeding the mud-caked animal, Toru names him Mackerel, deliberately replacing the joke-name Noboru Wataya with one grounded in the fish the cat has just eaten. The homecoming is both a reunion and a quiet reordering of what that name means.

The cat comes home

Toru’s premonition that things have begun to move accompanies him home with a bag of groceries. At the front door, the cat appears to greet him, meowing loudly and approaching with his bent-tip tail held high, as if he had been waiting all day. The missing animal is back after nearly a year. Toru sets down the groceries and lifts him into his arms.

The cat’s appearance makes the length of his absence visible without explaining it. Clumps of dried mud cover him from nose to tailtip, matting his fur into small balls, as though he has been rolling on dirty ground for a long time. He may be somewhat emaciated, but his face, body, and coat seem little changed; his eyes are clear and he has no wounds. Rather than looking like an animal gone for a year, he seems to have returned from one night of carousing. The difference between the duration of the absence and the familiar creature in Toru’s arms is left unresolved.

Hunger, sleep, and physical presence

Toru feeds the cat on the veranda with sliced mackerel he bought at the supermarket. The animal is so hungry that he eats too quickly, gagging and spitting pieces back onto the plate. He nearly empties his water dish, then begins licking the mud from his fur. After a moment he climbs into Toru’s lap, curls up, and falls asleep.

Toru watches the cat’s defenses fall away. At first the animal purrs loudly; the sound fades as he sleeps, forelegs tucked beneath his body and face buried in his tail. Toru sits in a sunny place, petting him gently, and feels the cat’s heart beating beneath his hand. Its pulse is faint and fast, yet it measures out the time allotted to the small animal’s body with the same restless earnestness as Toru’s own. The return is therefore not merely proof that the cat is alive: it gives Toru an immediate, bodily encounter with another living creature.

The cat’s condition also sets limits on what the reunion can tell Toru. His heavy sleep and mud-stiffened coat suggest privation, while the absence of visible wounds and the clarity of his eyes offer no account of what happened. Toru wonders where the cat has been, what he did, why he chose this moment to return, and where the lost time has gone. He wishes he could ask, but the cat cannot answer. The mystery survives the homecoming rather than being solved by it.

Renaming Noboru Wataya

Toru brings an old cushion to the veranda and sets the cat down. The animal lies limp on it, opens his eyes and mouth when lifted, but makes no sound; after yawning, he falls asleep again. As Toru puts away the tofu, vegetables, and fish, he sees that the cat has remained in the same position. This ordinary household pause leads him to reconsider the name the animal has carried as a joke.

The Okadas had called the cat Noboru Wataya because his eyes reminded them of Kumiko’s brother, but they had gone six years without giving him a real name of his own. By the time the cat returns, the human Noboru Wataya has become too prominent for that joke to remain harmless: he has been elected to the House of Representatives, and his name has acquired a weight that Toru does not want to attach permanently to the animal. The need for a distinct name is a consequence of the brother’s growing public presence, but it also recognizes the cat as a separate creature rather than an echo of someone else.

The new name comes from the meal that has just sustained him. Toru carries in the plate, clean as if it had been washed, and feels fortunate to have bought mackerel just as the cat came home. He takes this coincidence as a good omen for both of them and calls the cat Mackerel. Rubbing him behind the ears, Toru tells him, “You’re not Noboru Wataya anymore,” and gives him his new name. Mackerel replaces an inherited joke with something concrete, drawn from the cat’s own immediate experience.

The return’s quiet consequence

The cat sleeps through the afternoon on the veranda while Toru reads beside him until sunset. His breathing rises and falls like a distant bellows. Toru reaches out from time to time to check the animal’s warmth and make sure he is really there. After a period in which so much has happened that Toru had nearly forgotten the cat was missing, this simple contact becomes newly important: he can touch a warm body and feel it respond through breath and heartbeat.

The disappearance-and-return episode closes without disclosing the cat’s lost year, and its significance lies partly in that silence. The cat is not made to explain Toru’s other uncertainties; he remains an animal whose needs are immediate and whose past is inaccessible. Yet caring for him gives Toru a modest return to sensory life. Naming him Mackerel marks the same movement on the level of language: the cat comes back not as the human name that once stood in for him, but as a living presence recognized on his own terms.