‘Abandoning a Cat’ Review: The Poetics of Family Trauma
The Bookshelf Chronicles

‘Abandoning a Cat’ Review: The Poetics of Family Trauma

B2Upper-intermediateNovember 4, 202644 min

Haruki Murakami’s Abandoning a Cat is a reflective personal essay examining family trauma, wartime history, and intergenerational silence. The narrative centers on an unresolved childhood memory of taking a family cat to the beach to abandon it, only to find the animal had somehow beaten them home. This enigmatic event mirrors the life of the author's father, a former soldier-priest whose unexpressed wartime experiences and strained relationship with his son left lasting emotional residue. By embracing epistemological humility, Murakami resists offering neat narrative closures or moral simplifications about his lineage. Instead, the book demonstrates how national violence and personal ex...

Play episode

Opens the player: the full transcript, every word clickable, with translation and flashcards.

Try it: tap any word

Real sentences from the start of this episode. Every word is marked with its level.

Sentence 1 of 12 · 0:00

, .

Okay.

Hear this sentence

Tap a word to see its meaning in your language.

Do you know these words?

8 harder words from this episode. Tap one to see what it means, then mark it.

  • C12:05
  • B28:17
  • B211:23
  • B221:07
  • C122:45
  • B227:50
  • C138:11
  • C139:10

Mark a few words and we'll tell you how this episode fits your level.

Is this episode right for you?

B2

B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 33%A2 43%B1 16%B2 7%C1 1%
  • 92% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 168 words a minute: natural, fairly fast speech.
  • 412 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

Transcript

The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.

0:00

So picture this, you find a sturdy cardboard box. Okay. You coax your family cat inside, you fold the flaps down and you carefully balance

0:10

this box on the back of a bicycle. Which already sounds like a bit of a precarious setup, right? Oh, absolutely. But you do it and then you pedal two kilometers away

0:19

from your home and you carry the box into a thick grove of trees near the beach and you, well, you just leave it there. Well, just walk away.

That was the opening. The rest of the episode (44 min) is in the player: every word clickable, with translation, saved words and flashcards.

Continue in the player

Automatically generated from the audio. May contain errors. Audio belongs to its publisher and is played from their feed. Rights holders can request removal — copyright & takedown policy