Sōseki's title, Wagahai wa Neko de Aru, uses a very high-register phrasing more appropriate to a nobleman, conveying grandiloquence and self-importance.

However, Takahama Kyoshi, one of the editors of Hototogisu, persuaded Sōseki to serialize the work, which evolved stylistically as the installments progressed.

[1] In I Am a Cat, a supercilious, feline narrator describes the lives of an assortment of middle-class Japanese people: Mr. Sneaze[2] ("sneeze" is misspelled on purpose, but literally translated from Chinno Kushami (珍野苦沙彌), in the original Japanese) and family (the cat's owners), Sneaze's garrulous and irritating friend Waverhouse (迷亭, Meitei), and the young scholar Avalon Coldmoon (水島寒月, Mizushima Kangetsu) with his will-he-won't-he courtship of the businessman's spoiled daughter, Opula Goldfield (金田富子, Kaneda Tomiko).

The narrator's preferred personal pronoun, wagahai, is rarely-to-never used in real life in Japan, but survives in fiction thanks to the book, generally for arrogant and pompous anthropomorphized animals.

For example, Bowser, the turtle-king enemy in many Mario video games, uses wagahai, as does Morgana, a cat character in Persona 5.