かなしきデブ猫ちゃん

Maru was adopted from a rescue cat cafe and lives with a family in Matsuyama, Ehime. The young daughter Anna loves Maru and all is happy at first, but the parents adopt a pedigreed kitten. The kitten is pampered, while poor Maru is given tasteless dry “diet food.” The final straw comes after an incident which ends with Anna yelling at Maru, calling him デブ猫。That night, Maru leaves the house and walks to Dogo Onsen, where independent cats live proudly and all have the names of Botchan characters, and is sent by them on a quest which takes him all over Ehime. One of the writer’s goals was to showcase the charming scenery of Ehime, so this is something of a travelogue as seen by a cat.

The story is about novella-length, with lavish full-color illustration spreads every few pages. There’s about 140 pages of book, and subtracting the illustrations, I estimate there’s around 65 pages of text, printed in a slightly small font on normal A6 bunko pages. There’s also a large-size edition available. It was originally serialized in the 愛媛新聞 Saturday edition in 2018, and an animated series of short episodes is being released in Dec 2021.

It’s written in plain form and includes N3 grammar points, but the sentences tend not to be too long. The vocabulary is fairly high-frequency, and if there’s a word/expression you don’t know (aside from the Ehime place names) it’s probably worth learning. Kanji usage is medium-ish: less than a grown-up book, definitely more than 魔女の宅急便 or 銭天堂. There is full furigana. A few characters who appear briefly speak in dialect.

I enjoyed reading this. It’s a short little book with a relaxing, easy to read style and a happy ending. The charming illustrations help bring the scenes to life. I visited Matsuyama a long time ago and Maru’s adventures around Ehime reminded me of my own trip.