Revisiting Satire in Soseki Natsume’s I am a Cat

Abstract

Japanese writer Soseki Natsume’s I am a Cat is a critical observation on the way of living and mental attitude of humans from the perspective of an unnamed cat. The novel takes a cat as the mouthpiece of the writer to expose the human’s treatment on domestic animals, and thereby expose the meanness of treatment of animals by humans. Through this trend, the writer makes a mockery of the human behavior and practices. The unnamed cat lives in the house of a school teacher, and in the course, it is of the opinion that it is not a human. For it, humans are the most spoilt creatures of this earth who pretend to as omniscient as the Almighty, himself. This bitter observation makes the novel a fine example of many of the academic practices that humans perform over the other beings of this planet, and this is the satire on the humans – with an intention to make an amendment over such attitude and practice.