Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared from the World

So what would it be? My life or cats? At that moment, I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like without Cabbage. Four years had passed since my mother had died. Cabbage had always been by her side. How could I erase him? What was I supposed to do?

If cats disappeared from the world, how would the world be different? What would be gained and what would be lost in a world without cats?

I remembered what my mother said a long time ago:

“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.”

Cabbage was curled up and asleep. I lay down beside him and gazed at his face. Such a peaceful face. Never in his wildest dreams would he ever imagine a world where he had disappeared. I wouldn’t be surprised if he woke up at this very moment, speaking like a gentleman and demanding to be fed. But as I stared at his sleeping face I could also imagine him saying like a faithful friend, “I would gladly disappear for you, sir.”

On the one hand, they say that only humans have a concept of death. Cats don’t see it coming. It doesn’t cause them fear and anxiety like it does humans. And then humans end up keeping cats as pets, despite our angst over mortality, even though we know that the cat will die long before we do, causing the owner untold grief.

But then again, human beings can never grieve their own death. Death is always something that happens to others around them. When you boil it down, the death of a cat isn’t so different from the death of a human.

When I thought about it this way I finally understood why it is that we humans keep cats as pets. There’s a limit to how well we know ourselves. We don’t know what we look like to others, and we can’t know our own future, and we can’t know what our own death will be like. And that’s why we need cats. It’s just like my mother said. Cats don’t need us. It’s human beings who need cats.

As these thoughts were going round and round in my brain I suddenly felt a sharp pain in the right side of my head.

Feeling powerless I curled up in bed, trembling, just like Lettuce when he was dying. I felt so small and helpless in this body of mine, this body now dominated by death. I felt a heavy weight pressing down on my chest.

The pain in my head was getting worse. I went into the kitchen and took two painkillers, washed them down with water, and then went back to bed. I fell into a deep sleep.

“So what are you going to do?”

I remembered Aloha’s voice from the previous night.

“It’s either your life or cats.”

He laughed as he said the words.

“That shouldn’t be such a hard choice, should it? After all, if you weren’t around, who would take care of the cat? You don’t have much to lose.”

“Can you just give me some time?”

“What’s there to think about? The answer’s obvious.”

“Just hold off for a second.”

“OK. I get it. Then let me know your decision tomorrow… before your life is snuffed out.”

With this, Aloha disappeared.

When I woke up the sun was shining brightly outside. It was morning. I took my time getting up, all the time looking around the room for Cabbage. He wasn’t there. He was gone.

Where could he be? Had I decided to go ahead and make cats disappear while I was still half asleep?

I searched the room, first the old orange blanket he always slept in, then on top of the bookshelf, under the bed, the bathroom, the shower, but he was nowhere to be found. Cabbage liked crawling into confined spaces. Often he would hide in the washing machine, but he wasn’t there either.

Finally I checked the window ledge. Cabbage always liked to perch there, his tail dangling and occasionally twitching. I thought of the curve of his back when he was curled up sleeping, and how the hum of his purring was carried on his breath. And how warm his body felt on my lap.

Finally I thought I heard a faint meow coming from somewhere outside.

“Cabbage… ?”

I ran out in a panic, shoving on a pair of sandals. I thought he might be underneath the white minivan that was always parked in the lot across the street, but he wasn’t there either.

I ran along the route we took on our walk the day before. Maybe he was in the park… ? I ran up the hill until I made it to where we’d been yesterday. I thought he might be asleep on the park bench with the peeling blue paint. But no sign of Cabbage there. He wasn’t at the noodle shop begging for bonito flakes either. So I turned and headed for the row of shops, but he wasn’t there.

“Cabbage!”

I dashed around blindly, running and running until I’d worked up a terrible thirst. My throat and lungs felt so hot, like they might be about to combust. My leg muscles hurt so much I thought I might have torn them. I felt light-headed and a bit dizzy—reminding me of a day ages ago when I’d felt a similar combination of physical exhaustion and emotional pain. It’s not something I wanted to ever think about again, but experiencing the same confusion of feelings must have triggered the memory.

It was four years ago. I remembered that day clearly, running as fast as I could to the hospital. My mother had had another seizure. She had already been in hospital for a long time, and would sleep for long stretches, but every now and again she would be woken up by a seizure. The hospital would always let me know, and I’d run back to be with her.

When I got there on that day, she was sitting up in her bed, in pain. She was shaking and saying over and over again that she was cold. Seeing her like that scared me, and I called out to her. I’d never seen her that way. The whole time I was growing up she was always so bright and cheerful, and warm. She was always on my side. I always felt completely safe and secure when she was near. And now she was going to leave me. I was so scared and upset I thought I was going to pass out. She was repeating something under her breath, it was almost impossible to understand. “Sorry… sorry, I’m so sorry to leave you alone.” I was choked up—tears began to roll down my cheeks. I began to shake too, as I rubbed my mother’s back.

She suffered like that for an hour and then they gave her an intravenous painkiller, which made her fall into a deep sleep. Now she was sleeping peacefully. So peacefully it was hard to believe she had just been in so much pain. I was relieved and sat down in the chair near the bedside, bone-tired. Soon I fell asleep too.

I had no idea how much time had passed, but when I woke up, Mom was sitting up in bed reading a book using a small portable lamp. Suddenly she was back to normal.

“Are you OK, Mom?”

“Oh, you’re awake. Yes, I’m OK now.”

“Good.”

“… I wonder what’s going to happen to me.”

Mom examined her wrist. She had become so thin.

“I’ve become just like Lettuce.”

“Mom, you shouldn’t say that!”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

The window of the hospital room faced west, and the setting sun glowed bright pink, even brighter and more beautiful than it usually did. There was a photograph on Mom’s bedside. It was one of the photos we’d taken on our trip to the hot spring. Mom and Dad and me all facing the camera, smiling with our backs to the ocean.

“The trip to the hot spring was wonderful.”

“Yeah, it really was.”

“I was wondering what was going to happen when we didn’t get the inn we wanted.”

“Yeah, I really panicked.”

“Looking back now it seems kind of funny.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“The sashimi was delicious.”

“We should go again.”