How do cats living in Taiwan’s sleepy countryside villages spend their days? What do they think of us? In the spirit of Natsume Sōseki’s I Am a Cat , this work in 113 literary vignettes construes everyday life through a feline lens, providing a plethora of quirky insights to ponder.

This whimsically cat-centric novel is inspired by a real-life housecat who, as part of its daily routine, would spend hours basking in a windowsill across from the author’s apartment, clearly curious about his comings and goings. After being cast out into the street by its family, he would see it roaming the neighborhood with fellow street cats and, on occasion, find it once again in the window across the way, staring as before into his room. His whimsical wonderings about what that cat did all day and what must be on its mind flowed naturally from his mind onto paper.

Taro, the Pensive Puss unfolds as a first-person narrative through the eyes of “Taro”, a plain-looking, chronically low-spirited cat. In name, appearance, and propensity for roaming the surrounding neighborhood, he is indistinguishable from the five cats preceding him as Heng Chang General Store’s tomcat. He regularly hangs out on the store roof, watching passersby and gossiping with his chums, who include a tabby that loves spinning outlandish stories, a calico that can’t let a chance for mischievous fun slip by, and the cynical, philosophically minded young shop cat from Black Stache Café.

Through the eyes of Taro and his friends, the everyday world of the humans around them - its small dramas, comings and goings, political wranglings, family relationships, and popular trends – just always seems somewhat off, and ridiculous and downright silly at times. The aging Taro has a penchant for pondering the meaning of existence, freedom and bondage, truths and falsehoods, and infirmity and loneliness ; a trait he wonders whether he might share with his elderly owner. But even the chronically jaded and cynical Taro still finds in the gloom of life pockets of beauty and joy that let him, like the humans he regularly watches, occasionally put aside his fretting about illness and death.