If Cats Disappeared from the World

by Genki Kawamura

This life will someday have to end, so until that final day arrives, Do what you want to do, do it, do all you can, That’s how you face tomorrow.

“The thing is, there’s just not many things I want to do before I die,” I admitted. “Oh, really?” “At least, I don’t think I could come up with ten. And the ones I can think of are all probably pretty boring.” “Well, I guess that’s life, huh?”

Aloha said by making something disappear from the world, I could live for one more day. Let’s see now, that would be thirty items a month, 365 per year. It would be simple. The world is basically drowning in crap anyways. All those small, silly, useless things like the parsley they put on an omelet, or the promotional flyers they’re always sticking on your windshield. Or how about those lengthy user manuals that come with your new fridge or washing machine. Or watermelon seeds. All kinds of unnecessary things spring to mind. If you really think about it, you could come up with at least one or two million things the world could do without. If I’m supposed to live to seventy, that would mean I have forty more years left on the clock. So if I get rid of 14,600 items, I could die a natural death at the age of seventy after all. Aloha had a point: For thousands of years, humankind has done nothing but make useless things. So if something were to disappear, no one would notice. In fact, the world would be a simpler place.

Perhaps that’s what drives all human progress: an insatiable desire for new things.

Here I was standing at death’s door and I couldn’t think of a single person I cared enough about to call. I’ve connected with many people over the course of my life, but the relationships were ultimately all superficial. It’s really depressing—too depressing—to realize something like that at the end of your life.

“In order to gain something, you have to lose something,” she always said. People are always trying to get something for nothing. But that’s just theft. If you’ve gained something, it means that someone, somewhere, has lost something. Even happiness is built on someone else’s misfortune. She often reminded me of this. In fact, she considered it one of the laws of the universe.

When human beings invented the mobile phone, they also invented the anxiety that comes with not having one on you.

Throughout history we’ve given birth to new things, only to lose the old way of doing things.

For all we know, there might be all sorts of things that have already disappeared without our having noticed it, things that we’d assumed would always be around.

“There are so many cruel things in the world,” he once told us. “But there are also just as many beautiful things.”

Feelings can’t always be mutual. Love tends to fizzle out over time. And even though everyone knows that, it doesn’t stop anyone from falling in love. I guess it’s the same with life. We all know it has to end someday, but even so, we act as if we’re going to live forever. Like love, life is beautiful because it must come to an end.

It seemed like the times when I wasn’t able to get ahold of her was when she were on my mind the most.

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long shot.”

It seems to me that the idea of something disappearing from the world and what the world would actually be like without it are two totally different things. It’s not only about the thing suddenly not being there. There’s something else that happens that can’t be measured. It’s a real loss, an emptiness that’s created. It’s so small you could miss it, but without anyone noticing, our lives are changed completely.

I realized then that when a person talks about something they really love, there’s a kind of thrill to listening to them.

“With great power comes great responsibility,” Peter Parker reminds himself in Spider-Man after he discovers his superpowers.

It’s the future you’ll never get to see that you really regret missing most of all when you die.

What did I gain by growing up, and what did I lose? I know the answer to only the second part of that question. Innocence—all those precious hopes and dreams that you can only have when you’re in your adolescence.

After the credits, life does go on. My hope is that my life will go on to live in the memories of others who’ve witnessed my story.

“You only realize what the really important things are once you’ve lost them.”

With freedom comes uncertainty, insecurity, and anxiety. Human beings exchanged their freedom for the sense of security that comes from living by set rules and routines—despite knowing that they pay the cost of these rules and regulations with their freedom.

However, when you think about it, a human being can never really grieve their own death. Death is always something that happens to other people around them. In the end, the death of a cat isn’t so different from the death of a human.

There are different ways of showing someone you love them, you know.”

As you go on with your life, always remember the things that are good in you. They are your gifts. As long as you have these things, you’ll find happiness, and you’ll make the people around you happy. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. And good-bye. I hope you never forget that these things are the things that make you special.

There’s a reason why everything exists in this world. And there’s no reason good enough for making them disappear.

“Yeah, but just being alive doesn’t mean all that much on its own. How you live is more important.”

“What I mean is, I wonder if I’ll have any regrets when my time comes.” “Oh, of course you will. You want to live, right? You might even beg the devil to come back once your number is up! Humans tend to regret the life they never lived and the choices they never made.”

So I guess I’m going to die with all those failures and regrets: all those unfulfilled dreams, all the people I’ve never met, all the things I’ve never tasted, and all the places I’ve never been. I’m taking all that with me to my grave, and I’m okay with that. In the end, I’m satisfied with who I am and the life I’ve lived. I’m just happy to have been here at all.

“They say in the end you become aware of who the most important people are in your life and that you finally understand the value of lots of other important, irreplaceable things and how wonderful life truly is. You traveled around the world you live in and saw it with fresh eyes. You discovered that despite the boredom and the everyday routines of life that there is a real beauty in it. That on its own makes my having come here worth it.” “But I’m going to die soon.” “Of course you are. But one thing’s for sure, even though you know your life is coming to an end, you’re still happy all the same.”

It’s possible that the world wouldn’t have changed that much without these things in it, but it makes you realize that all these individual things make up an entire world.