BookBrowse Reviews Mornings Without Mii by Mayumi Inaba

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Published in English for the first time and sure to tug the heartstrings of cat lovers everywhere, Mayumi Inaba's Mornings Without Mii expresses the joys and sorrows of a shared life with her soul-cat.

Sharing your life with a cat is an enlightening experience and a true testament to unconditional love. In Mayumi Inaba's modern Japanese classic, Mornings Without Mii (2001) (now translated into English for the first time by the award-winning Ginny Tapley Takemori, translator of Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman, among others), she shares the many lessons learned from 20 years alongside her companion and soul-cat, Mii: the triumphs, the laughter, and the heartbreak.

In this short but powerful memoir, Inaba (1950–2014) presents a series of essays showing her personal growth from young interior design assistant to editor to blossoming and eventually celebrated writer — a journey she tracks through milestones with Mii. Inaba discovered Mii clinging to a chain link fence one Tokyo night in 1977, a fateful event she would never forget. She remarks that it seemed to be the wind that brought the kitten's tiny meows to her ears:

"The breeze that night. Those cries from the school fence would have never reached me without it. Maybe it delivered her cries to my window. Perhaps by some ghostly chance the breeze from the river had a magical power that night."

"Mii had decided on her own name with her cries."

Experiencing the ignorant but energetic wonder of first-time cat ownership, Inaba nurses Mii to adulthood, watching her play with toys and snooze in the sun with equal fascination. The little tri-colored cat easily worms her way into Inaba's heart; she purchases a camera specifically to take photos of Mii after a health scare: "I wanted to leave a record of Mii ... I started chasing her around with it, and would sometimes creep up on her when she was asleep and press the shutter."

When Inaba and her husband move to a spacious home with a garden shrine, Mii gleefully explores her natural surroundings, but always returns home to be with Inaba when she writes after work. Later, when she and her husband separate, it is Mii who comforts her into healing; when Inaba wins her first writing prize and her career picks up steam, it is Mii she shares her triumphs with. After her lease runs out, she dedicates herself to finding a new home suitable for the both of them. Nothing less will do — abandoning her best friend is unfathomable.

Inaba's tone in Mornings Without Mii is straightforward and profoundly intimate, warmly inviting readers to witness the deep joy and creative solitude life with Mii provided. You truly feel welcome on their nightly walks through the apartment complex, a routine devised to comfort Mii after her separation from the outdoors. Inaba frequently reconsiders the choices she has made in her personal life, the humans she's shared her time with, and those she let go. But through it all, she never once reconsiders her time with Mii, her constant stability amidst upheaval. No matter where they live, Mii is her very center of heart and home.

Dispersed between chapters are touching poems dedicated to Mii, simple observations of two souls who found each other by chance and strengthened a connection through love. It is a tender reminder for cat owners that every moment is precious, every blep of the tongue or belly shown in trust is a sign of our bond. Their lives may be short, but our connection is infinite. We become as attached as if they were our biological children. "The greenery shines...in my cat's gentle eyes."

As Mii ages and her health declines, Inaba cares for her incessantly, knowing their time is growing thin. In an especially moving chapter, she recounts traveling with an elderly Mii to her family's cottage, letting her once again experience the soil and grass she loved so much in her early years.

It was a strange sort of comfort reading Mornings Without Mii as my own 15-year-old cat Deckard's life waned, with him passing just as I passed the midpoint of the book. I was feeling exactly what Inaba felt, knew her immeasurable pain without knowing it truly at all. While every experience of enduring love for an animal undoubtedly shares similarities, each relationship is so unique to the pair that it can never be reproduced. What a beautiful thing, though, to reach back beyond the years to a writer who's now one of your favorites and cry and nod along to her words in understanding. Mornings Without Mii is a tribute not only to the personal pain of caring for another so deeply and losing them, but also the power of writing. Their influence on one another is so intertwined here, both Inaba and Mii are ensured immortality.

Despite the inevitable sorrow of Inaba's account, there exists a common vein of hope, and recurrent scenes of life's everyday pleasures. Inaba relays frequent musings on the beauty of her surroundings, the small moments she shares with Mii by the robinia flowers, a flutter of petals landing on Mii's fur; watching the skyline together; and when Mii must meet the sunlight, as all of us one day must. Light, then, is the biggest connector of all, as Inaba says at the end of her exquisite story, one that is sure to stay with its readers long after they dry their eyes. "Souls circle in the rays of light..."

This review first ran in the February 26, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.