After being dumped by his girlfriend and moving to a new apartment, the anonymous anti-hero of this plaintive novel finds himself drawn to the life of a recluse, shunning drinking friends, and spending his time reading or doing exercises at home alone.
Obsessed with cats and horse racing, and slowly taking refuge on the fringes of boredom and melancholy, he fills his days trying to lure a stray kitten into his apartment or going to the racetrack with acquaintances interested only in indifference and conspiracy theories. Women are only of use to these men if they accompany them to the track — and only if they happen to be good-luck charms — or fulfil some kind of role as muses for erotic ennui. More interesting are the cats that roam Tokyo, and more so a specific orange tabby that lives in an alley near the man's apartment in Nakamurabashi.
Into the man's super-ordinary life drift various people: Yumiko — a cat-loving friend, Akira — a self-schooled artist, and Shimada — a would-be avant-garde filmmaker, all of whom move through a vague world where the ordinariness of reality becomes disconcertingly dreamlike. Unable to communicate in any real sense with the people around him, the nameless man attempts to understand the mystery of cats and the mind of the equally feline-crazy Yoko — a girl Akira brings to the apartment. If all this sounds Haruki Murakami-lite, it isn't. Kazushi Hosaka's novel reads more like Douglas Coupland as he injects dry humour into the laid-back narrative with dialogues on the absurdity of racehorse names and the possibility of super-mutant thoroughbreds in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.