<DIV>Written over the course of 1904-6, Soseki's comic masterpiece,<i> I Am a Cat</i>, satirizes the follies of upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him.<br><br><B>The New Yorker</B> called it <I>"a nonchalant string of anecdotes and wisecracks, told by a fellow who doesn't have a name, and has never caught a mouse, and isn't much good for anything except watching human beings in action..."</I></div>