If Cats Disappeared from the World

by Genki Kawamura

I disappeared from the world? Well, I suppose nothing would change at all. Things would probably just go on, day after day … same as usual.

Maybe the entire human race is unnecessary and the world we live in has no meaning at all.

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

Countless people with whom I seemed to have had some kind of a relationship, but when push comes to shove, I didn’t actually share much of a connection with them after all.

“In order to gain something, you have to lose something,”

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...

Fate, however, seems to have a sense of humor.

Being such a slave to the device made me hate myself.

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.

Did my life even have any meaning? Was it worth the effort?

Women tend to be unforgiving and unsentimental when it comes to their exes.

As we should!!!!!

I’d heard somewhere that people forget things in order to build new memories. You have to forget some things in order to move on in life.

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

A place where there was no denying just how powerless and utterly helpless we human beings are.

How strange it was that we had both felt like we were meant to be together, and yet both of us could see that the end was clearly coming.

While the telephone had made it easy for us to get in touch with each other quickly, in retrospect it also meant that we missed out on the chance to get to know each other in a more profound way and to become truly close.

We didn’t even have to talk about anything special—just talking would have been enough to show that we were there for each other and that we cared.

I must have a whole collection of small injuries, tucked away somewhere in the recesses of my memory.

“Love is an eternal teacher,”

I assumed that because I was happy, she must be happy, too. But then a time came when that was no longer the case. 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.

Phones had disappeared from the world, but what had I really lost? I wondered. I had entrusted that device with my memory and my relationships, and when it suddenly disappeared, I was filled with overwhelming anxiety.

Life and death have the same value.

What do you want meaning for? Life is about desire, not meaning.

Basically, all human beings really need to survive is food, water, and shelter. In other words, pretty much everything in this world, everything that humans have made, is pretty unnecessary. They’re fun to have around, but we could do without them.

die. I realize it’s strange to use the word “regret” about things that haven’t happened yet, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking, If only I could live longer, I could do this or that. It’s a weird train of thought, because the list of things that I wanted to do was made up of things that didn’t really matter in the end.

To live means to cry, to shout, to love, to do silly things, to feel sadness and joy, to laugh, even to experience horrible, frightening things.

I suppose you could say that my life is like that photograph. A movie that shows my whole life would include both comedy and tragedy. All the joy, anger, and sorrow I’ve been through, the result of which would be nothing more than a blank screen. There’s nothing there, nothing left. Only an empty space.

Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who has changed,

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.

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

Human beings went through the trouble of inventing rules that imposed limits on their lives, boxing them up into hours, days, and years. And then they invented clocks to make time’s rule over us even more precise.

This made me realize I had to cherish every moment I had left to live.

Had I done anything significant during my thirty-year existence?

Had I spent time with the people whom I really wanted to spend time with? Had I said all that needed to be said to the people who mattered?

I got so caught up with all the little everyday tasks that I ended up wasting the time that I could have been sp...

But the scariest thing is that I never even noticed that I was wasting...

How ironic, I thought. For the first time in my life, I was finally taking a long, hard look at my future, but only after being told that I didn’t have long to live.

Cats are really something, huh, I thought. They’re capable of completely ignoring you half the time, but then they seem to know when you’re really in need of some comforting.

And love, this magical thing that’s unique to human beings and can sometimes make us absolutely miserable, is also the thing that buoys the human spirit.

Like time, color, temperature, and loneliness, love is one of those things that only humans experience.

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.

For example, we don’t know what we look like to others; we can’t predict our own future or what our own death will be like. So that’s why we need cats, to help us understand ourselves better. It’s just like my mother said: Cats don’t need us. It’s us who needs them.

With family you tend to take for granted the fact that they’ll always be there

Perhaps I should start a new list, but when I think of all the things that I want to do before I die, they all involve you.

As you go on with your life, always remember the things that are good in you.

I always wanted to thank her properly for all she’d done for, but never found the words.