In Haruki Murakami’s *Kafka on the Shore*, the old man who can talk to cats is Satoru Nakata. Nakata is one of the novel’s two principal figures, alongside the teenage Kafka Tamura, and his unusual gift links the book’s realistic world to its dreamlike supernatural events.
As a child, Nakata is one of sixteen schoolchildren who collapse during a mushroom-gathering trip in Yamanashi Prefecture during the final years of World War II. Unlike the other children, he does not recover his memory or ability to read and write. Afterward, he develops the uncanny ability to communicate with cats and refers to himself in the third person.
As an elderly man, Nakata works part-time finding lost cats. A search for one missing cat draws him into a dangerous encounter with the cat-killer Johnnie Walker and sends him on a journey toward Takamatsu. He travels with Hoshino, a truck driver who becomes his companion and protector.
Kafka is the runaway teenage protagonist, Oshima works at the private library, and Hoshino accompanies Nakata. None of them is the elderly cat-speaking character.