If Cats Disappeared from the World

by Genki Kawamura

If cats disappeared from the world, how would the world change? And how would my life change?

And if 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.

There must be something, I don’t know what, but something on this planet that only I could do.

I’d always thought things would never be the same again after seeing the earth from so high up. I’d forget all the small stuff and grab life by the horns.

Why would someone go and jump out of a plane of their own free will? Was this what I had wanted?

When you think about it, there must be all kinds of things cluttering up the world which are borderline unnecessary. Maybe the entire human race is unnecessary. The world we live in has no meaning at all.

“In order to gain something you have to lose something.” Mom said it was just obvious. 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.

When human beings invented the mobile phone, they also invented the anxiety of not having one.

The Devil was in fact “pulling a Doraemon.”

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

I had left the work of memory and even my ties to other human beings to my mobile phone. I no longer bothered to memorize anything.

“Oh, right, and one more thing. Whenever you phoned you’d talk a lot, but then when we met in person, like this, you didn’t have much to say.”

The telephone made it easy for us to get in touch quickly, but in exchange, we missed out on the chance to get to know each other in a profound way, to become truly close.

As usual I had forgotten what she said.

“So I told you everything I didn’t like about you. Just so you’d know before you die.”

When we began our relationship, I just couldn’t imagine it would ever end. I just assumed that because I was happy she must be happy too. But a time came when that was no longer the case. Feelings can’t always be mutual.

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.

And strangely enough, it was when I couldn’t speak to her that she was on my mind the most.

That must be it. It has to be. Life has meaning for everything, even a jellyfish or a pebble by the side of the road.

He makes a sound like a meow, and when I look again I see a cat wearing a top hat.

When you think about it, it’s the future you’ll never get to see that you regret missing the most when you die.

Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after a long time, it makes a totally different impression than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed. It’s you that’s changed, and seeing the same film again makes that impossible to forget.

What did I gain by growing up, and what did I lose? I can never resurrect the thoughts and feelings I had in the past.

Completely unnecessary scenes run way too long. And the scenes we really want to see are cut right at the point where they’re getting good.

Human beings went to 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.

“Just because there are different kinds it doesn’t mean you have to name each and every one. Why not just call them all flowers? Isn’t that good enough?”

“Cats and humans have been partners for over ten thousand years. And what you realize when you’ve lived with a cat for a long time is that we may think we own them, but that’s not the way it is. They simply allow us the pleasure of their company.”

You can convince yourself to be happy or unhappy. It just depends on how you choose to see things.

I realize that it might seem stupid for me to give up my own life for cats. But that’s just the way it is. It’s who I am.

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

People are fickle that way. Something they once valued becomes meaningless to them almost overnight. Even the most treasured presents, letters, and beautiful memories are forgotten about, becoming useless odds and ends.