If Cats Disappeared from the World

by Genki Kawamura

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

I’d always thought that when my time came, I’d go quietly, peacefully, and with dignity—that’s how I always imagined it would happen. But when death stares you in the face, you find yourself willing to accept a helping hand from anyone, even the devil, in order to stay alive. It’s basic human instinct. Dignity and respectability fly out the window at that point.

“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.

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.

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

“There’s something just as inevitable as death. And that’s life.”

“What do you want meaning for? Life is about desire, not meaning. Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish.”

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.

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.

“Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams.”

“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.

They say that only humans can contemplate death. Cats don’t fear it the same way that we do. It doesn’t cause them the same level of anxiety that it does us humans. And then, despite our angst over mortality, we end up keeping cats as pets, even though we know that they will die long before we do, causing the owner immense grief.

With family you tend to take for granted the fact that they’ll always be there and that you’ll figure out how to get along somehow.

Humans tend to regret the life they never lived and the choices they never made.”