I Am a Cat is a satirical novel written in 1905–1906 by Natsume Soseki about Japanese society during the Meiji period (1868–1912); particularly, the uneasy mix of Western culture and Japanese traditions.
Soseki's title, Wagahai wa Neko de Aru, uses a very high-register phrasing more appropriate to a nobleman, conveying grandiloquence and self-importance. This is somewhat ironic, since the speaker, an anthropomorphized domestic cat, is a regular house cat of a teacher, and not of a high-ranking noble as the manner of speech suggests.
The book was first published in ten installments in the literary journal Hototogisu. At first, Soseki intended only to write the short story that constitutes the first chapter of I Am a Cat. However, Takahama Kyoshi, one of the editors of Hototogisu, persuaded Soseki to serialize the work, which evolved stylistically as the installments progressed. Nearly all the chapters can stand alone as discrete works.
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