Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared from the World

“How so?”

“Spending all this time with you was a big deal for her. Mom was really fond of you.”

“Mom, you say?”

“My mother. I guess she was kind of your mother too.”

“Exactly who is this person you refer to as ‘mother’?”

I was speechless.

Cabbage must have forgotten about Mom.

But that’s impossible. Or on the other hand, maybe he’d made himself forget about her.

I remembered my mother’s face the day she rescued Cabbage. She looked a bit sad, and yet she was also so happy. She would watch TV with Cabbage curled up on her lap, stroking him until he fell asleep. Then she would fall asleep too, tucked up with Cabbage on the sofa. She looked so peaceful. I got choked up thinking about it.

“Don’t you remember Mother?”

“Who is it you speak of?”

Cabbage had the look of someone who was wondering what the hell I was talking about. He really must have forgotten about her. It suddenly hit me how sad this was. Cabbage’s complete innocence just made me feel worse. I guess somewhere deep down I always believed those stories about animals that never forget their master, like in the story of Hachikō, who for years waited at the station for his master to come home, without realizing his master had died…

But I wonder if that’s just wishful thinking on the part of humans. Would Cabbage forget about me soon, too? Would there come a day when I disappeared from Cabbage’s world?

All the moments I’d lived through, more or less without thinking about it, began to feel very important. How many more walks would I be able to take with Cabbage? With the amount of time I had left, how many more times would I be able to listen to my favorite music? To enjoy a cup of coffee, a good meal? To say good morning, sneeze or laugh?

I’d never thought about life this way before. It hadn’t crossed my mind during any of my visits to my mother. If I’d realized that someday it would all have to end, I would have appreciated the time I spent with her more. Before I knew it Mom was gone. She died before any of these things had occurred to me.

Had I done anything significant during my thirty-year existence? Had I spent time with the people I really wanted to spend time with? Had I said all that needed to be said to the people who mattered?

There was a time when I could have called my mother, but my mind was always on my mobile’s recent call history. I was so busy dealing with what happened to come up at any given moment that I left all the important things for later.

I got so caught up with all the little everyday things that I ended up wasting the time I could have spent on more important things. But the scariest thing is that I never even noticed that I was wasting my precious time. If only I’d stopped for a moment to get some perspective, away from all that busy running around. It would have been obvious what the most important thing was, and which of those calls (if any) really mattered.

I looked at Cabbage.

While I’d been thinking, he’d curled up and gone to sleep on the bench. With his four white feet tucked in and folded under his black and grey fur, he looked like a perfectly round throw-pillow. I stroked him and felt his little heart beating away. It was almost unbelievable that such a life force flowed through this small creature, as he lay there so still, sleeping peacefully.

I’ve heard it said a mammal’s heart beats around two billion times during its lifetime. The life expectancy of, for example, an elephant, is about fifty years. For horses it’s twenty years, and cats ten years, while a mouse will last only for about two years.

But whatever the average lifespan, all of their hearts beat around two billion times. The average life expectancy of a human being is seventy years. I wondered if my heart had beaten two billion times.

My whole life up to this point, I’d faced what I thought was an infinite tomorrow. But once I discovered that my life would indeed end, it felt more like the future was coming to meet me. Now I found myself heading toward a future that was set in stone. At least, that’s how I felt.

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

The right side of my head began to hurt and I was finding it difficult to breathe.

I didn’t want to die yet. I wanted to go on living.

So tomorrow I’d once again make something disappear from the world.

Which is to say, something would have to disappear from my future, so that I might live longer.

Cabbage slept on.

The park had emptied of children and the sun had moved further and further toward the west. Cabbage finally woke up. He stretched as far as he could without falling off the bench and let out a great yawn, which he seemed to take his time recovering from. Cabbage stared at me lazily.

“I say, shall we go now?”

Cabbage, still groggy from just having woken up, spoke in a pretty condescending tone, addressing no one in particular. He jumped down from the bench and sauntered off with his usual jaunty stride.

Cabbage headed toward the street that led to the station, through the shopping district. He stopped in front of a soba shop and gave a loud meow. The shop owner emerged with a handful of bonito flakes left over from the day’s batch of soup stock, which they served with the noodles. Once he’d polished off his winnings, Cabbage licked his chops and walked off, muttering “excellent” under his breath as he went. With this kind of behavior it was difficult to tell who was the master and who was the pet.

It seemed Cabbage had become quite the local celebrity in the shopping district. Wherever he went, people who knew him shouted hello. It looked like I’d become the retainer of the lofty-speaking cat. Though on the other hand, Cabbage’s popularity meant that I was able to buy vegetables and fish and everything else on sale. Who would have thought that there was such a thing as a cat discount!

“From now on I’m always going shopping with you!” I told Cabbage, carrying as many shopping bags as I could in each hand.

“Yes, that’s all very well. Now you can make me a meal I actually like.”

“That’s what I always do. How about that cat food, Neko-Manma, that I always feed you?”

Cabbage skipped a little ahead of me then suddenly stopped in his tracks.

“What’s wrong?”

He looked pretty angry.

“Regarding this so-called Neko-Manma… there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you for some time now.”

“What? OK, go ahead. Say it.”

“Just what is this stuff you call Neko-Manma anyway?”

“Huh?”

“It’s just a hodgepodge of table scraps and other questionable material you humans have thrown together and given a pretty name to.”

He seemed to be about to burst with frustration and let out a gruff yowl. He went over to a nearby telephone pole and began sharpening his claws by digging them into the wood.

I hadn’t realized how much he hated what I’d been feeding him. Again I thought about all the customs we humans have just made up. Just then the little apartment we lived in together appeared in the distance, down the hill from where we were.

After we got home we ate grilled fish together (the real thing), and continued our quiet and relaxing day.

“So, Cabbage…”

“What is it?”

“You’ve really forgotten all about Mom?”

“I don’t remember a thing.”

“That’s so sad.”

“How so?”

I didn’t know how to explain to Cabbage why it was sad. And I couldn’t blame Cabbage for forgetting either. But at the same time, I wanted to tell him something about the time he spent with Mom… I mean, that was real. There was no denying it happened.