If Cats Disappeared from the World: Questions and Answers

Genki Kawamura’s If Cats Disappeared from the World traces one man’s seven-day journey through impossible exchanges, loss, and reconciliation. The following questions and answers draw directly on the novel’s events, using textual evidence to unpack character decisions, hidden tensions, and the symbolism woven through the narrator’s final days. Each entry identifies the relevant chapter and explores how specific moments illuminate the book’s central themes.

1. Why does the narrator nickname the devil “Aloha” in the opening chapter?

Calling the devil Aloha — a breezy, Hawaiian‑shirt reference — allows the narrator to trivialize a terrifying encounter. By giving his doppelgänger a ridiculous name, he deflects the weight of a terminal diagnosis and the surreal offer to trade objects for extra days. This instinctive humor masks his deep fear of mortality and sets the tone for his initial passivity. In Monday’s chapter the devil appears as the narrator’s identical double in a Hawaiian shirt, and the nickname sticks even as the stakes escalate, revealing how the narrator’s lifelong habit of avoidance begins right at the moment of crisis.

2. What made the narrator remember his ex‑girlfriend’s phone number by heart, and what does this reveal about his loneliness?

Scrolling through his contacts before the phone disappears, the narrator realizes he lacks any meaningful human connection — no close friend, no family member he could call. Yet he dials a woman whose number he still knows instinctively. That number belonged to his ex‑girlfriend, the one person with whom he had once built a fragile intimacy, even if it existed mostly through hours-long phone calls rather than in-person honesty. Her being the only memorized number underscores how profoundly isolated he has become, clinging to a past relationship as his sole lifeline when facing death.

3. How does the narrator’s habit of ordering curry rice reflect his larger emotional indecision?

During their Tuesday reunion, the ex‑girlfriend lists his flaws, including that at restaurants “you could never decide what to order, so you’d always end up ordering the same thing every time — curry rice.” This seemingly trivial behavior mirrors his approach to life: confronted with choice, he defaults to the safe, unquestioned option rather than consciously selecting what he wants. The pattern repeats throughout the novel, from drifting into a postal job without passion to avoiding difficult conversations with his father. In Chapter 2 the ex‑girlfriend’s observation becomes a diagnostic tool that helps the narrator — and the reader — see his lifelong failure to act.

4. Why did the Buenos Aires trip fracture the narrator’s relationship with his girlfriend?

The couple traveled to Argentina expecting adventure, but a fellow traveler’s death forced an abrupt confrontation with mortality. The girlfriend wanted to process the shock together; the narrator shut down emotionally, unable to articulate his feelings. That silence widened a crack already present: he could talk passionately on the phone about music and novels yet in person “didn’t have much to say.” Their breakup stemmed from this mismatch between mediated intimacy and genuine emotional presence — a rift that echoes the central question of the novel about what we lose when we substitute convenience for authentic connection, as explored further in the theme of trade-offs.

5. What is the symbolic significance of the blank movie screen in Chapter 3?

After failing to choose a final film, the narrator watches a blank screen in the theater. The emptiness becomes a surface for projecting his own life — memories of seeing E.T. with his parents, his mother’s death, his estranged father. The blankness is both a sign of everything already erased from his life through inaction and an invitation to fill the void with meaning. Like the long‑exposure photograph he imagines, the screen captures the cumulative light of missed moments. In Wednesday’s events this experience turns the act of watching nothing into a profound meditation on how art and memory shape identity.

6. How does Cabbage’s ability to speak on Thursday expose the narrator’s unresolved grief?

As a “bonus” after erasing clocks, Aloha grants Cabbage human speech. The cat’s formal, upper‑class diction turns out to have been absorbed from the period dramas the narrator’s mother watched. When Cabbage reveals he has no memory of Mom, the narrator retrieves photo albums and shares stories of her, culminating in the final family hot‑springs trip. The conversation forces him to vocalise emotions he has kept locked away, and he breaks down in tears. Chapter 4 thus uses the talking cat as a device to surface the narrator’s suppressed mourning and highlight how much of his mother’s love he has been refusing to acknowledge.

7. Why does the narrator cry when recalling the hot‑springs trip, and what does this foreshadow?

While showing Cabbage the photo albums, the narrator recounts the family trip to a hot spring — the last outing before his mother’s death. He realises that her dying wish was not for physical healing but for him to repair his relationship with his father. The tears are a release of long‑buried guilt and a recognition that he has been ignoring her final request. This moment in Chapter 4 plants the emotional seed for the novel’s climax, foreshadowing that reconciliation is not only possible but necessary for his redemption before his own death.

8. How does the death of Lettuce and the arrival of Cabbage mirror the narrator’s family pattern?

Lettuce died of a tumor on the narrator’s mother’s lap; she was devastated until she found Cabbage, a look‑alike kitten. Just as one cat replaced another, years later the mother succumbed to the same kind of illness and asked the narrator to care for Cabbage. This cycle of love, loss, and replacement teaches him that affection can outlive the body — Cabbage becomes a living link to both Lettuce and Mom. In Chapter 5 the narrator’s refusal to erase cats is ultimately a refusal to sever that chain of devotion.

9. What drove the father to focus on repairing the wristwatch instead of being at his wife’s bedside?

The father, a clockmaker, poured his energy into fixing his wife’s stopped watch during her final hours. The narrator interpreted this as cold indifference and cursed him for it. But the evidence suggests the opposite: watches were the father’s language of care, a concrete act of trying to hold onto time and to offer a restored object as a symbol of his love. He was attempting to mend a world that was falling apart in the only way he knew. The narrator’s misreading of this gesture fuels a four‑year estrangement, examined in the context of mortality and acceptance.

10. How does the mother’s posthumous letter reframe the narrator’s self‑worth?

Delivered by the ex‑girlfriend in Chapter 5, the letter lists ten wonderful qualities about her son rather than personal regrets or instructions. She calls him kind, attentive to small things, someone who hides his kindness behind shyness. Coming from a mother who can no longer speak directly, this unconditional affirmation cuts through years of self‑doubt. It gives the narrator the courage to say “Thanks, Mom” for the first time and, crucially, provides the internal foundation he needs to reject Aloha’s deal — he can now see his life as valuable exactly as it is.

11. How does Aloha’s revelation as “the person you could have been” transform the meaning of the bargain?

In the Saturday chapter, Aloha explains that he is the side of the narrator “that you’ve never shown to the world … cheerful but shallow, wearing flashy clothes, doing whatever you want.” The devil is therefore not an external tempter but the embodiment of unlived possibilities and regrets. The entire exchange becomes an internal struggle: the narrator is negotiating with the person he might have been if he had made bolder choices. Choosing to die rather than erase cats indicates that he finally accepts his actual, imperfect life over the fantasy of a regret‑free alternative, a shift explored in the ending analysis.

12. How does the narrator’s childhood stamp collection explain his career as a postman?

Rediscovering his stamp collection in Chapter 6 triggers memories of the postcards his father sent from Europe, particularly one with a cat stamp that resembled Lettuce. The boy would lie awake imagining the journey of each letter, and that fascination stayed with him. The realization “why I ended up being a postman” links his vocation directly to a desire to connect worlds, much as the stamps connected distant countries. The postal job emerges as a subconscious attempt to maintain a thread of communication with his father and to recreate the joy of delivering heartfelt words.

13. Why does the narrator decide to deliver his letter in person rather than mailing it?

Standing at the mailbox on Sunday morning, he recognizes that sending the letter would repeat the same pattern of mediated, risk‑free communication that had defined his phone‑based romance and his distant relationship with his father. So he returns home, puts on his old postman uniform — now his father’s spitting image — and pedals toward the next town. The uniform symbolizes inherited identity and the decision to become an active bearer of his own message. By delivering the letter by hand, he transforms from a carrier of other people’s feelings into someone who finally offers his own. This scene connects to the broader sacrifice theme, because he is sacrificing the safe distance of a mailed goodbye for the vulnerability of a face‑to‑face meeting.

14. How does the cycle of death and replacement through the two cats shape the narrator’s acceptance of mortality?

Lettuce’s death devastated the narrator’s mother, but soon Cabbage arrived — a near‑identical kitten who revived her smile. Years later, after his mother’s death, Cabbage remained as a surviving vessel of that love. The pattern teaches the narrator that things loved are never truly lost; they are “replaced” through ongoing care. When he refuses to let cats disappear from the world, he is rejecting the logic that loss can be paid off. Instead he embraces a memory‑and‑identity in which Cabbage carries forward the hearts of both Lettuce and Mom, and his own death, too, can be meaningful if he ensures Cabbage’s future.

15. What does the narrator’s final bicycle ride represent within the novel’s emotional arc?

Pedaling downhill toward his father’s house with Cabbage in the front basket, the narrator experiences a literal and symbolic release. The spring sunlight, the wind, and the coasting motion contrast with every previous instance of paralysis and hesitation. The hilltop viewpoint — from which he had so often gazed at his father’s town without ever visiting — finally becomes the starting point of action. That descent embodies acceptance of mortality and the rejection of the family estrangement that had defined his adult life, delivering him not only to his father’s doorstep but to a version of himself willing to connect.