Mother: The Heart of If Cats Disappeared from the World
Overview
The narrator’s mother died four years before the story begins, yet she remains the emotional backbone of If Cats Disappeared from the World. Her absence fuels the widening rift between her son and her husband; her memory and a long‑held letter, finally delivered, steer the narrator away from despair. Quiet, self‑sacrificing, and quietly wise, she embodies the kind of love that continues to shape lives long after a person is gone. Through flashbacks, a childhood “magic trick,” and a posthumous list of her son’s best qualities, Genki Kawamura shows that the mother’s deepest desire was not to prolong her own life but to heal the fracture in her family.
Plot Role
Although deceased before the timeline of the novel, the mother’s influence surfaces repeatedly. Her final illness and the circumstances of her death are the root cause of the narrator’s four‑year silence with his father. In the story’s present, Aloha the devil forces the narrator to decide whether to erase cats from existence. This impossible choice sends the narrator on a frantic search for his cat Cabbage—and into memories of his mother’s last day and the pain that followed. Ex‑girlfriend Mika hands him a letter the mother wrote during her illness but never mailed, and that letter becomes the pivot. Her postscript—“Please make up with your father”—is the direct catalyst that drives the narrator, in the final chapter, to pedal toward his father’s house and attempt reconciliation. Without the mother’s words, the novel’s resolution would not exist.
Motivations and Character Traits
The mother’s personality is revealed almost entirely through small, telling actions remembered by her son. She is selfless to a fault: when she decides to write a bucket list, she abandons her own “10 Things I Want to Do Before I Die” because she realises that everything she truly wants involves her son’s future happiness. Instead, she writes “10 Things I Want to … write down ten amazing things about you,” listing qualities such as his ability to cry with others, his dimples when he smiles, and the way he rubs his nose when anxious. She wants the letter to be a source of strength, not a declaration of her own unmet desires.
Her wisdom is practical and tender. She teaches the young narrator a “magic trick” for sadness: close your eyes, force a smile, then close them again. The fake smile gradually transforms dark, swirling emotions into a “gentle, cream‑colored light.” She also offers philosophical reflections on cats and on loss. She says that “Cats and humans have been partners for over ten thousand years … you may think that you own them, but that’s not really the way it is. Cats simply allow us the pleasure of their company.” After watching Fellini’s La Strada, she observes, in essence, that you only realise what truly matters once it’s gone—a theme that echoes throughout the narrator’s journey.
Her love is shown in everyday sacrifices: tucking in the covers when he kicks them off, searching all day for a specific lunch box, giving him her omelet when he’s still hungry, and rarely buying anything new for herself. She also befriends the narrator’s first girlfriend, cooking, doing nails, and visiting new restaurants together, as if she already knows the young woman will one day become the messenger she needs.
Chronological Arc
The mother’s arc unfolds out of sequence, pieced together through the narrator’s memories. Early scenes capture a happy family: taking the three‑year‑old boy to see E.T., the little hand gripping his father’s in the dark, the salty smell of popcorn. Cats lettuce and Cabbage enter the home and become part of the family, teaching the boy about companionship and, eventually, loss.
Her illness creeps in quietly. The narrator admits he failed to notice how much her condition had worsened, blaming his father for expecting her to keep house, while his father likely blamed him for not insisting on a doctor. Even as her health fails, she continues to hold the family together. Her final day becomes the story’s sorrowful climax: she suffers a seizure, the narrator rushes to the hospital, and she speaks her last words about the father fixing her wristwatch. The father arrives late, holding the unfixed watch, and the narrator curses him. The mother dies, and the two men never speak again.
Yet the story does not end there. After death, her letter—entrusted to the ex‑girlfriend with instructions to give it during a “difficult time”—reaches her son exactly when he is crumbling under the devil’s demands. The letter’s closing line pulls him out of self‑pity and toward action, making her arc one of posthumous redemption.
Key Relationships
With the narrator (son). The bond is marked by quiet, steady devotion. She rubs his back when he is sick, holds him when he was lost at an amusement park, and cooks the best omelets. He, in turn, never manages to thank her properly while she is alive. The “magic trick” becomes a shared secret that he can access years later, and her letter finally gives him the words he could never find himself.
With the father. The marriage contains its own unspoken strain. The mother’s dying request—that the father fix her wristwatch—suggests she still saw their connection as something worth repairing. She wanted the watch working again, just as she wanted the family working again. The father’s failure to do so in time, and the narrator’s harsh reaction, tear the family apart, but her postscript “Please make up with your father” issues the same command from beyond the grave.
With the ex‑girlfriend (Mika). The mother treats the young woman like a daughter she never had. They go out together, cook, and even get their nails done. When the mother falls ill, Mika visits her in hospital and accepts the sacred task of holding the letter. That trust proves essential; without it, the narrator might never have received the message.
With the family cats. Lettuce and Cabbage are more than pets—they are a lens through which the mother teaches about life and mortality. She strokes Lettuce gently as he dies, showing her son that grieving is part of loving. Her belief that cats willingly share their lives with humans becomes a model for the narrator’s eventual refusal to erase cats, a choice that means giving up his own extra days.
Key Decisions and Their Consequences
- Choosing her son’s happiness over her own. By rewriting her bucket list as a gift of affirmation, she ensures that even after death she gives her son the emotional ammunition to face hardship. That list is what steadies him when he reads it in the movie‑theater lobby and later guides his decisions.
- Giving the letter to Mika. Fearing she would never see her son again after he read it, she entrusts the letter to someone she sensed would reappear at the right moment. This long‑term planning turns a simple note into a perfectly timed lifeline.
- Asking the father to fix the watch. On the surface, it is an errand; symbolically, it is the last attempt to keep a small, mechanical piece of their shared life ticking. The father’s inability to deliver it in time becomes a tragic irony, but the gesture itself reveals her refusal to give up on him.
- Including the postscript. “Please make up with your father” transforms the letter from a mother’s farewell into a direct call to action. Without that final line, the narrator might have died bitter and alone.
Thematic and Symbolic Connections
The mother weaves together several of the novel’s central themes. Her statement that “In order to gain something, you have to lose something” directly mirrors the trade‑offs the narrator faces each day. Her letter and the “magic trick” are living repositories of memory, illustrating how identity is built from the past. The choice to list her son’s strengths instead of her own wishes embodies pure, sacrificial love. Her death and the broken watch feed directly into the theme of family estrangement and the possibility of reconciliation, a thread that runs from the hospital room to the final bicycle ride. Even the cats—Lettuce dying on her lap, Cabbage carrying her voice—underscore the acceptance of mortality that she models so movingly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the mother’s “magic trick”?
Whenever the young narrator was sad, she told him to close his eyes, force a smile, then close his eyes again. The act of smiling, even insincerely, seemed to clear away black, swirling sadness and replace it with a gentle, warm light. She called it “a little magic trick you can play on yourself” and encouraged him to do it as many times as necessary until he felt happy. Years later, when Cabbage prompts him to remember the trick, the narrator uses it and finally whispers the “Thanks, Mom” he never said in life.
Why did she leave her letter with the ex‑girlfriend instead of mailing it?
The mother wrote the letter while hospitalised but felt she could not send it. She was afraid that once her son read it, she would never see him again. Knowing their relationship had ended and unsure if the ex‑girlfriend would ever cross paths with the narrator again, she still insisted that someone hold onto the letter “as long as it was important to her.” She instructed Mika to give it if the narrator was ever going through a really hard time. That forethought allowed the letter to arrive at the precise moment the narrator was closest to despair.
Did she write a bucket list, and what did it contain?
She began with a conventional list titled “10 Things I Want to Do Before I Die,” but quickly questioned whether fancy meals and travel were what she truly wanted. Realising that every genuine wish involved her son’s future, she discarded the personal list and instead wrote ten admirable qualities about him. The list includes his ability to share sadness, his dimples when he smiles, his habit of rubbing his nose when worried, and the fact that he always relished her cooking. The letter ends with “These are your gifts”—a final gift of self‑confidence from a dying mother.
How did the mother’s death cause the narrator’s estrangement from his father?
On the day she died, the father was absent from the hospital because he was trying to repair her wristwatch. He arrived late, holding the still‑broken watch, after she had already passed. The narrator exploded, demanding to know why anyone would spend those final moments tinkering with an object rather than being by her side. That confrontation severed their relationship; they did not speak for four years, a silence that only begins to dissolve when the mother’s postscript urges reconciliation.
What do the cats represent in the narrator’s memory of his mother?
For the mother, cats were not possessions but companions who chose to share human lives. She taught that “we may think we own cats, but that’s not the way it is; they simply allow us the pleasure of their company.” Lettuce and Cabbage anchored the family’s happiest moments—Lettuce dying peacefully on her lap, Cabbage absorbing her voice—and became living links to her love. When the narrator refuses to erase cats from the world, he acts on the belief that some things, like a mother’s love, are more important than survival.