A Man & His Cat, book 6, by Umi Sakurai. Square Enix Co Ltd.

The sixth volume of A Man & His Cat finds Mr. Kanda cat sitting Fukumaru’s littermate while her owner, Hibino, is on a concert tour. Hibino is, of course, Kanda’s old competitor, but their cats have brought them together. There are many vignettes of Fukumaru and Marin, playing and eating together, with Fukumara dealing with some jealousy when Marin gets too close to Kanda. There is also sibling rivalry on the human front, between two young musicians. Meanwhile, on the human front, a young instructor at the music school where Kanda also teaches, has his rock band get a gig- and all his bandmates don’t show up. Hardly a moment passes before the older musicians, including Kanda, get up from the audience and join him on stage, managing (to great acclaim) to play rock even though it’s not their normal genre. This is a breakthrough for Kanda’s PTSD induced stage fright. There is a lot more human stories in this volume than in the previous ones, but it’s still interesting.

 

A Man & His Cat, book 5, by Umi Sakurai. Square Enix Co Ltd.

In this volume, Fukumaru and Mr. Kanda face the situation that every pet owner fears: Fukumaru gets out the door as Mr. Kanda enters, and doesn’t come back. The book breaks into multiple threads at this point. We follow Mr. Kanda and his friends as they search for days for Fukumaru, while another thread is Fukumaru himself, wandering the city, lost and fearful. There are also a couple of other side threads; Moja, who lived in the cage next to Fukumaru at the pet store is on the streets, too, and Moriyama deals with problems with his band. Interspersed with the heavy stories are one page vignettes of life with cats, including one where Fukumaru starts heaving and Kanda tries (fruitlessly) to get a newspaper in front of the cat before he vomits. We’ve all been there! Five stars, despite a few glitches with the art.

 

A Man & His Cat, book 3, by Umi Sakurai. Square Enix Co Ltd

The third volume of this delightful series shows us more vignettes of Kanda and Fukumaru interacting: Kanda trying to read and Fukumaru laying on his book, Fukumaru demanding more food right after eating, Fukumaru trying to get Kanda’s food. And, then, a horrifying event! Fukumaru must go to the vet and, as the woman at the pet store says, get his cherries picked! Which proves to be more stressful to Kanda than to Fukumaru. We see more of Kanda’s past, and why he no longer performs on stage. There are some panels where the characters… over emote? Over react emotionally? that seemed kind of strange. Kanda’s lifelong friend, Kobayashi, turns out to be a deeper human being than he first seemed. And we see Fukumaru’s childhood, which about broke my heart. Then there is a kind of soap opera-ish interaction with one of Kanda’s old competitors- who also suddenly ends up with a cat. Altogether another (mostly) sweet story. The “mostly” part being the weird emotional over reacting.