We’ll Prescribe You a Cat

This very cute book, We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, by Syou Ishida, was recommended by my friend Ana. It’s the story of a very unusual psychiatrist and his very unusual nurse who prescribe cats to people who are stressed out, depressed, bullied at school, etc. The doctor and the nurse act strangely, and no one knows why, and people are a bit shocked to be told that a cat will solve their problems.

But of course, cats DO solve people’s problems, and when it’s time to return the cat to the doctor, at the end of the prescribed time, some people are not really willing to do so. Also, sometimes they are unable to do so, for a strange reason.

We learn about the lives of different people (the story takes place in Kyoto), and, as usual, I loved learning about the Japanese work environment, which is so different from the North-American job context. School, on the other hand, seems to be the same everywhere. And little by little, we learn about these strange psychologist and nurse, and who they really are. But it’s not until the very end that everything finally makes sense!

It really is a funny and cute story. There were two narrators, a man and a woman, I am not sure why. They were both good, although I preferred the man’s voice. It took me 7 hours to listen to the entire book. While I was listening to it, my cat, Rosie, was getting used to our new roommate, Karen, the Japanese ESL student who is staying with us until December, and it was fun to make some parallels between the cats in the story and Rosie’s reactions and changes in attitude towards Karen.