Mornings With My Cat Mii

It was the end of summer, 1977. I found a cat, a little ball of fluff. A teeny tiny baby kitten.

The perfect gift for cat lovers: a beloved Japanese modern classic about our special connection with cats, and how they can change our lives over the course of a lifetime.

For the last twenty years, Japanese readers have been falling in love with the late poet and prize-winning author Mayumi Inaba’s story of life with her cat Mii, after she rescued her as a newborn kitten from a riverbank in Tokyo.

We follow their everyday joys through the seasons, as Mayumi develops her career as a writer and finds her feet in life, with her small feline always at her side.

Mornings With My Cat Mii lovingly chronicles Mayumi and Mii’s unshakeable twenty-year bond, meditating on solitude, companionship, the writing life, and how we care for our cats as they grow older.

Translated into English for the first time by world-renowned translator Ginny Tapley Takemori, this beloved Japanese modern classic is a celebration of how a cat can change our lives forever.

Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

A beloved Japanese modern classic about our special connection with cats and how they can change our lives over the course of a lifetime'Cat lovers, prepare to weep' The Times'A cat classic' Catherine Lacey'Profoundly real... and beautifully written' Elif Batuman'Aglow with incidental joys' Rivka GalchenOn a cool summer evening in 1977, Mayumi Inaba hears a forlorn cry. She follows the sound to the banks of Tokyo’s Tamagawa River and finds a newborn kitten dangling from a fence, abandoned. Overcome by tender affection, she takes the cat back to the small apartment she shares with her husband and christens her Mii: so begins an unshakeable bond. Over the next twenty years, we follow Inaba, a poet and novelist by moonlight, as she pursues quiet solitude and a room of her own. Through it all, Mii, a fiercely independent creature in her own right, is her confidante and muse. This beloved Japanese modern classic is not just a love letter to companionship: it’s a poignant, searching meditation on the forces that enable us to connect, to create and to build a life. ‘Reveals the profound respect, and compassion, that a friendship with an animal can inspire’ Sigrid Nunez, New YorkerTranslated by Ginny Tapley Takemori**Readers ADORE Mii**‘A lovely little gem’‘Gentle and enchanting and had me in floods by the end’‘Absolutely beautiful'‘Sweet and heartbreaking’‘Told with grace, beauty and love’

• | Author: Mayumi Inaba, Ginny Tapley Takemori
• | Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• | Publication Date: Oct 16, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language: eng
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781529922813
• | ISBN-10: 152992281X