Books Like The Travelling Cat Chronicles
There are books you read, and there are books that read you. The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa is emphatically the second kind. It begins with Nana - a stray cat with an excellent opinion of himself - being rescued from the roadside by Satoru, a kind young man with an open heart. The two become inseparable. Then, one day, Satoru explains that he can no longer keep Nana, and the two set off on a journey across Japan in Satoru’s silver van, visiting old friends one by one in search of a new home for the cat.
The novel is narrated in alternating chapters, with Nana’s voice - proud, fussy, fiercely loyal, and deeply funny - carrying much of the story. As the journey unfolds, the reader slowly understands what Satoru is really doing, and why every goodbye on this trip matters more than the last. It is a short book, but it has made millions of readers weep in public, and it has earned its place as one of the most beloved animal-narrated novels of the century. If that is the feeling you are after, the books below are all cut from the same tender cloth.
Why Nana Is One of the Great Narrators
The genius of the novel is Nana’s voice. Arikawa gives the cat a personality that is specific, consistent and utterly convincing - he is proud of his name (which means “seven,” given by a kind woman he met as a kitten), suspicious of other cats, devoted to Satoru, and entirely convinced that he is the one doing the rescuing. His observations about humans are funny because they are so precise, and his loyalty is so pure that it quietly wrecks the reader long before the ending lands.
The alternating structure also does something clever: the chapters from other characters’ points of view let the reader see Satoru from the outside - his kindness, his history, the weight he carries - while Nana’s chapters show us his heart. By the time the true purpose of the journey becomes clear, the novel has built so much love that the ending arrives like a wave the reader has been swimming toward all along.
The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide
A married couple living in a small Tokyo guesthouse has no cat - but a neighbor’s cat, a beautiful creature named Chibi, keeps visiting them. She comes and goes as she pleases, and her visits slowly change the texture of their days, their marriage, and their sense of what their lives are for.
The Guest Cat is quieter and more impressionistic than The Travelling Cat Chronicles - it is almost a prose poem about a cat, a marriage and a house - but it shares the same tender attentiveness to the way animals enter our lives and rearrange them. Like Arikawa’s novel, it understands that a cat is never just a cat; it is a way of paying attention to the world. For readers who loved the quiet, observant register of Nana’s chapters, Hiraide’s small masterpiece is a natural next step.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Tova Sullivan is a seventy-year-old widow who cleans an aquarium at night, grieving a son she lost decades ago. Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus with a sardonic wit and a very long memory, has been watching her for years - and he has decided to help her uncover the truth about the worst day of her life.
The kinship with The Travelling Cat Chronicles is immediate: both novels are narrated partly by an animal, and both use that perspective to look at human grief with fresh, unsentimental eyes. Nana and Marcellus are very different creatures - one a fussy cat, one a wry octopus - but they share the same literary function: to love a human so thoroughly that the reader is carried along into the heart of the story. If you loved Nana, you will love Marcellus, and vice versa.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
In a small basement café in Tokyo, there is a chair that can take you back in time - with one catch: you cannot change the past, and you must return before your coffee gets cold. Each chapter follows a different visitor - a woman who wants to speak to her lost love, a man who wants to see his sister, a mother who wants to meet her unborn child.
The novel shares The Travelling Cat Chronicles’ Japanese setting, its structure of small, connected stories, and its profound gentleness about grief and goodbye. Both books are built around the ache of wanting more time with the people we love, and both treat that ache with extraordinary tenderness. It is a strange, lovely, quietly devastating book, and it has become a global phenomenon for exactly the same reasons Arikawa’s novel has.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Ove is a grumpy, rule-obsessed widower who has decided he is done with the world. His plan keeps being interrupted by the chaotic young family next door, who need him for everything from a broken radiator to a parking dispute - and slowly, against his will, Ove is pulled back into the world of the living.
The connection to The Travelling Cat Chronicles is the current of loyalty and unexpected love running beneath the surface. Both novels are about people who carry enormous love and enormous loss, and both show how the people - or cats - who refuse to leave them alone become the instruments of their healing. Backman writes with more humor, but the emotional register is the same, and readers of one almost always love the other.
The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa
Rintaro is a reclusive high school student who has inherited his grandfather’s used bookstore. When a talking tabby cat named Tiger appears and asks for his help, Rintaro is drawn into a series of adventures - labyrinths of books that need rescuing from people who have forgotten what reading is for.
This is the most overtly fantastical book on this list, but it shares The Travelling Cat Chronicles’ love for cats, for books, and for the quiet power of caring about something deeply. Tiger is a worthy successor to Nana - bossy, mysterious, and secretly soft - and the novel’s celebration of reading as a form of love will resonate with anyone who finished Arikawa’s book and immediately wanted to hug a cat and a book at the same time.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
In a small basement café in Tokyo, there is a chair that can take you back in time - with one catch: you cannot change the past, and you must return before your coffee gets cold. Each chapter follows a different visitor - a woman who wants to speak to her lost love, a man who wants to see his sister, a mother who wants to meet her unborn child.
The novel shares The Travelling Cat Chronicles’ Japanese setting, its structure of small, connected stories, and its profound gentleness about grief and goodbye. Both books are built around the ache of wanting more time with the people we love, and both treat that ache with extraordinary tenderness. It is a strange, lovely, quietly devastating book, and it has become a global phenomenon for exactly the same reasons Arikawa’s novel has.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Ove is a grumpy, rule-obsessed widower who has decided he is done with the world. His plan keeps being interrupted by the chaotic young family next door, who need him for everything from a broken radiator to a parking dispute - and slowly, against his will, Ove is pulled back into the world of the living.
The connection to The Travelling Cat Chronicles is the current of loyalty and unexpected love running beneath the surface. Both novels are about people who carry enormous love and enormous loss, and both show how the people - or cats - who refuse to leave them alone become the instruments of their healing. Backman writes with more humor, but the emotional register is the same, and readers of one almost always love the other.
The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa
Rintaro is a reclusive high school student who has inherited his grandfather’s used bookstore. When a talking tabby cat named Tiger appears and asks for his help, Rintaro is drawn into a series of adventures - labyrinths of books that need rescuing from people who have forgotten what reading is for.
This is the most overtly fantastical book on this list, but it shares The Travelling Cat Chronicles’ love for cats, for books, and for the quiet power of caring about something deeply. Tiger is a worthy successor to Nana - bossy, mysterious, and secretly soft - and the novel’s celebration of reading as a form of love will resonate with anyone who finished Arikawa’s book and immediately wanted to hug a cat and a book at the same time.
What Cats Teach Us About Love
Why do animal-narrated novels move us so deeply? Perhaps because animals love without conditions and without explanation - they do not need us to be impressive, only to be there. That is exactly the kind of love Satoru gives Nana and Nana gives Satoru, and it is why the novel’s ending lands so hard: it asks us to witness the most ordinary and most profound thing in the world, which is one creature loving another all the way to the end.
If you want to read more about loyalty and the bonds that hold families together, our collection of community and belonging themes, values and reading notes explores the ideas behind these stories, and our guide to family-friendly family healing looks at how love mends what is broken. The relationships section is full of tender, hopeful recommendations like this one.
Choosing Your Next Read
If you want another animal narrator with a fierce personality, start with Remarkably Bright Creatures. If you want something even quieter and more poetic about a cat, The Guest Cat is a small masterpiece. If you want more Japanese tenderness about grief and time, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is the one. And if you want a grumpy human who is saved by love, A Man Called Ove will make you laugh and cry in equal measure.
Conclusion
The Travelling Cat Chronicles is a novel about the lengths love will go to - a man driving across a country to find a home for the cat he cannot keep, a cat who understands more than he lets on, and the quiet, devastating truth at the heart of their journey. It reminds us that the best love is often the most ordinary, and that saying goodbye is sometimes the bravest thing we do. The books gathered here share that tenderness, and any one of them will stay with you long after the final page - the way Nana stays with Satoru, and the way both of them stay with us.
