A Wild Sheep Chase 羊をめぐる冒険 (Hitsuji o meguru bōken)
First published in Japan in 1982
translated into English by Alfred Birnbaum in 1989
This is the last of the Trilogy of the Rat and the novel won the Noma Literary Award for new writers.
BOA Favorite Quotes:
“The cat was anything but cute. Rather, he weighed in at the opposite end of the scale, his fur was scruffy like an old, threadbare carpet, the tip of his tail was bent at a sixty-degree angle, his teeth were yellowed, his right eye oozed pus from a wound three years before so by now he could hardly see.”
When the narrator leaves his cat in the care of someone else, he has specific instructions:
“Don’t feed him fatty meat. He throws it all up. His teeth are bad, so no hard foods. In the morning, he gets milk and canned cat food, in the evening a handful of dried fish or meat or cheese snacks. Also please change his litter box daily. He doesn’t like it dirty. He often gets diarrhea, but if it doesn’t go away after two days the vet will have some medicine to give him.”