If Cats Disappeared from the World

by Genki Kawamura

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

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. Beautiful songs, beautiful scenery, nausea, people singing, planes flying across the sky, the thundering hooves of horses, mouthwatering pancakes, the endless darkness of space, cowboys firing their pistols at dawn …

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.

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.

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