Messenger Cat Café

The charming, quirky Japanese bestseller about a cat in the afterlife seeking connection

By: Nagi Shimeno, M. Jean - translator

Narrated by: Tim Lounibos

"A much-needed dose of comfort and positivity." —Shanna Tan, translator of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop

Tabby cat Fuuta has passed into the afterlife and will do anything to see his human again . . . if only he can not disrupt the balance of the universe.

After a long life with a loving human family, tabby cat Fuuta has passed into the afterlife, but he is not as far from his owner, Michiru, as it seems. Slight openings bridge the divide between the lands of the living and the dead, and they can be traversed.

Eager to see Michiru again, Fuuta interviews for a position at Café Pont, a café that exists in the liminal space between the two worlds, known for its unique message delivery service: Customers leave requests with the name of the person they wish to meet, and a messenger cat is assigned to arrange the "meeting."

If Fuuta doesn’t maintain plausible deniability, he could cause panic amongst the living, or worse: He could upset the balance of the universe itself. It is a weighty task for an old tabby cat, but Fuuta is up for the challenge. After all, the job offers a special reward: the right to see Michiru. And he’ll do anything to reunite with his family.

Critic reviews

One of BookBub's Best New Literary Fiction of February

"Shimeno, who is a café owner in Tokyo, provides quite the reassuring balm for readers forever bonded to their felines. Jean charmingly translates, admitting that Messenger Cat Cafe was 'the first novel to make her cry on the job.'" —Booklist

"Charming read that skillfully balances the idealistic worldbuilding and lighthearted perspective of its cat narrator with emotional encounters and the bittersweet reality of life and death. Heartwarming without shying away from serious issues, Shimeno’s book is a welcome addition to the growing ranks of healing fiction." —Library Journal

"Messenger Cat Café is exactly the kind of delightful escape we need right now, and such a charming, effervescent novel that even a dog person like me is recommending it to everyone I know." —Lauren Grodstein, New York Times bestselling author of A Dog in Georgia

"I’d like to think that a messenger cat brought the book to me, giving me a much-needed dose of comfort and positivity." —Shanna Tan, translator of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop