Having published more than ten novels and three short story collections (and that's just the stuff that's been translated into English!) Haruki Murakami has developed a whole host of regular tropes that are arguably as charming as his characters themselves. You'd be forgiven for thinking these recurrences are nothing more than coincidence or habit, but the creation of a story is no slight thing, and writers often have to defend every inclusion they make from a rigorous editing process. You can almost hear Murakami's editors grumbling with each new draft: really, Haruki? Another cat?! Of course, one of the joys of literature is that it's open to interpretation  especially when it comes to someone like Murakami, who is no stranger to surrealism or abstraction. While it's impossible to state with absolute certainty that anything in fiction has an objective "meaning", Murakami undoubtedly uses certain repeated descriptions and images to evoke precise effect. With all that being said, sometimes it's fun just to speculate about things, too. After all, that's what most of Murakami's characters spend their whole lives doing  and who doesn't want to be one of those? All you've got to do is find your nearest well...it's time to get deep about Haruki Murakami.