Home cat

The house cat is the Okadas’ long-missing pet, first known through an informal joke-name borrowed from Kumiko Okada’s brother and later renamed Mackerel when he returns after about a year away. His disappearance draws Toru Okada into repeated searches through a narrow, enclosed alley; his return brings him back to the household as a living presence to feed, shelter, and touch. The cat’s ordinary needs and renewed trust matter precisely because they are concrete: amid Toru’s estrangement and uncertainty, caring for him restores a small, reciprocal sense of being home.

Identity and Place in the Household

The cat belongs to Toru and Kumiko Okada’s household, but for years the couple does not give him a proper name. They call him Noboru Wataya as a private joke because his eyes resemble those of Kumiko’s brother. As the real Noboru Wataya becomes an increasingly powerful presence, including after his election to the House of Representatives, Toru decides that the cat should no longer carry that name. The change separates the pet’s identity from the threatening public figure and gives him a name rooted instead in the immediate circumstances of his return.

The household itself has a provisional history. Toru and Kumiko move into their Setagaya house in the autumn of their second year of marriage, after the apartment they had rented in Koenji is slated for renovation. Toru’s uncle offers them the house at nominal rent, on the condition that they leave with three months’ notice when asked. Although the property is not theirs, its yard and the feeling of living in a real house give the couple a sense of becoming a household. The cat’s eventual return is therefore not merely the reappearance of an animal: it restores a familiar member of a home whose security and intimacy have become uncertain.

Disappearance and the Search

The alley behind the houses is not a through-route but a cramped passage closed at both ends. It once connected two streets; development in the mid-1950s narrowed it, and neighbors successively blocked its ends with a fence, a cinder-block wall, and barbed wire. It survives as an overgrown buffer between back gardens, with only a few places wide enough to pass without edging sideways. Toru climbs over the wall to enter it, making the search for the cat a repeated crossing out of the ordinary domestic route.

Toru’s search becomes part of his daily routine even after Malta Kano has said the cat is no longer in the neighborhood. On a rainy day, he chooses to go looking rather than swim at the local pool, setting out in tennis shoes and a light raincoat. The alley is unusually quiet: his shoes make no sound on the grass, and the uniformly gray sky seems to absorb not only noise but perception itself. On another passage, voices, food smells, a radio, and glimpses of family life leak through the fences, making the alley a narrow seam between private homes. The cat is absent from these searches, but the route gives Toru a habitual purpose while he waits for Kumiko and for the telephone to ring.

One early clue to the alley’s attraction is an empty house at its far end. The relatively new two-story building has weathered shutters, rusted railings, weeds, and a stone bird statue in its garden; Toru thinks it should be a place suited to cats, yet he sees none. In the neighborhood’s earlier memory, the house had belonged to the Miyawaki family, whose apparent happiness made its sudden vacancy all the more striking. The family disappeared, and the empty building seemed to become detached from the lives that had filled it. The cat’s search thus unfolds among spaces marked by absence as well as domestic routine.

Return and Renaming

When the cat finally comes back, his fur is matted with dried mud and he seems somewhat thin, but he has clear eyes and no wounds. He does not appear to Toru like an animal that has been missing for a year; his return has the disconcerting familiarity of an ordinary homecoming. Toru offers him sliced mackerel bought at the supermarket. The cat eats so quickly that he occasionally gags and spits pieces back into the dish, then drinks nearly all the water Toru provides.

After eating, the cat begins to clean his mud-covered fur, climbs into Toru’s lap, curls up, and sleeps. His forelegs are tucked beneath him and his face is buried in his tail. As the purring fades into silence, Toru gently strokes him in the sunlight on the veranda. He has almost forgotten the cat’s soft warmth during everything that has happened, and the pet’s unguarded sleep—its visible trust—stirs warmth in him. Toru feels the cat’s small, fast heartbeat, registering the animal as a living being with time passing through its body, not merely as a missing object to be found.

The return raises questions that the cat cannot answer: where he has been, what he has done, why he has come back now, and what traces remain of his lost year. Toru wishes he could ask him, but the reunion offers no explanation. Instead, he places the sleeping cat on an old cushion and lets him rest while he puts away groceries. The cat’s return is meaningful without becoming a recovered account of his absence.

Toru decides that the old joke-name no longer fits. Because the cat has just eaten mackerel, he names him Mackerel, choosing a name connected to a meal that has restored him. He tells the cat that he is no longer Noboru Wataya and that his name is now Mackerel; the impulse to announce the change to the world makes the naming feel like a small declaration of release from the brother’s shadow. It also makes the pet newly particular: an animal in this house with a name of his own.

Homecoming and Significance

The following morning, Mackerel is still there. He has cleaned the mud from his fur and looks almost as he did before he disappeared. Toru feeds him, changes his water, and tries the new name. On the third call, the cat turns toward him and gives a small meow. The modest response confirms neither where Mackerel has been nor why he returned, but it establishes that the new name has entered their shared routine.

Toru then begins his own day. He showers, puts on clean clothes and new sneakers, and takes the train to Shinjuku, returning to a familiar bench. Later, after spending the day elsewhere, he slips back through the alley to the house. He gives Mackerel fresh water and canned food; the cat appears at the sound, rubs his head against Toru’s leg, and eats. Toru drinks a beer and holds him on his knees, feeling his warmth and softness. The day’s separation ends in a simple recognition: both have come home to the same place.

Mackerel’s return does not resolve the larger absences in Toru’s life, and the cat cannot explain the year he lost. His role is quieter and more immediate. Feeding him, naming him, and feeling his heartbeat provide Toru with acts of care and contact that are not dependent on answers. The pet’s presence turns home from a setting Toru passes through into a relationship renewed by daily attention.