The Cat and The City

by Nick Bradley

‘Where you can’t stop thinking. You look back at every choice you ever made in life, and all you can see are the mistakes. The things you did that brought you to where you are.’ Keita stared into space, as if he were looking at something Ohashi couldn’t see. ‘And how if you’d just done a few things differently, if you’d just made better choices, then you’d be in a better place right now.’

Don’t you ever just feel like things change? Like, even if something dramatic or terrible in your life doesn’t happen, just the act of growing older is like a massive trauma anyway.

Sometimes I feel like this whole city is one vast organism. It’s like a human being that we’re all part of. But we’re restricted by the roads, by the waterways, by the tunnels, the trains. It’s like our paths are all laid out for us, and there’s no way of deviating from them. That’s what makes that cat different from us.

Who needs friends, when you have books.