Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared from the World

While Cabbage was busy eating I picked up the old cookie container on the table and stared at it for a while. Then finally I opened it. This is where I kept all my hopes and dreams as a boy. It was my stamp collection.

There were stamps of all colors and sizes from around the world. All at once the memories began flooding in. They were memories of my father. When I was a small boy my father bought me a collection of Olympic commemorative stamps. They were small and colorful, and too special to use for mailing letters. After that, my father often brought me presents of stamps. Small and large stamps, Japanese stamps and stamps from foreign countries. My father was so shy and reserved, he rarely spoke. So the stamps became a kind of way for us to communicate. It’s strange, but it’s almost as if I understood what he was thinking about depending on the kind of stamps he gave me.

When I was in elementary school my father traveled to Europe with a group of friends. He sent postcards from all of the places he visited. There were large, colorful stamps on the postcards. The one I remember most clearly had a picture of a cat yawning. It made me laugh. It looked just like Lettuce. It was one of the few jokes my father ever came up with. It made me happy, and I removed the stamp by soaking the postcard in water overnight. I added it to my collection. I couldn’t sleep that night imagining all the places my father had visited in Europe. I imagined him on a street corner in Paris, buying the cat stamp at a shop, speaking in stilted French, and then sitting in a cafe writing the postcard. I even imagined him dropping the card into a yellow mailbox, and then the postman collecting it, taking it to the airport where it was loaded with other mail heading for Japan. And then finally the postcard would be delivered to my own town and then to our house. The entire journey of the postcard after it had been posted fascinated me.

Finally I understood why I ended up being a postman. I would spend ages gazing at the stamps, all the different colors and the many countries they’d come from. There were all kinds of pictures and designs on the stamps. Pictures of people and places I could only imagine. They became really precious to me.

Then I thought about all the things I might have made disappear from the world if I’d gone on with the Devil’s deal. Maybe the world wouldn’t have changed that much without these things in it, but at the same time, it’s all these individual objects, along with all the other things that exist, that make up this world. That’s what occurred to me as I held these little squares cut out of paper. Somehow I began to feel like the whole process of placing a stamp on an envelope and mailing it, it arriving at its destination, had a deeper meaning. Just imagining it gave me a certain warm, happy feeling.

Then I realized what I needed to do in the time left to me. I needed to write you a letter. I needed to write about all the things I’d never told you these past years. The thousands of words that lay dormant within me, all the greetings I never sent your way, the emotions I never shared. I let all my feelings flow out of me onto the paper, and put a stamp on it. I imagine all the stamps scattering and falling like flower petals, decorating my final moments.

So many stamps with so many pictures: a festival, a horse, a gymnast, and a dove; a Japanese woodblock print, and an ocean. A piano, a car, people dancing, and flowers, great men remembered by their various nations. An airplane, a ladybug, a desert, and a yawning cat. At the moment of my death when I lie down and close my eyes. All of them swirl round and round above me. A phone rings, and on the screen an old silent movie plays— Limelight , then the hands of the clock begin to move, and all the letters fly through the air. Red, blue, yellow, and green, purple, white, and pink. The many-colored envelopes flutter away into the pale-blue sky. And quietly, I breathe my last. Before the myriad of stamps, and the letters expressing endless pain, but also unlimited happiness, in all my smallness, alone, I die with a faint smile on my face.

So now I sit down to write a letter. A letter which is also my last will and testament. Who should I address my last letter to? I ponder this for a while when Cabbage comes up to me and meows. Ah yes, that’s it. Now I know. I will address my letter to the same person that I’ll deliver Cabbage to before I die. There’s only one person it can be. Maybe I’ve known for a long time, but couldn’t admit it to myself.

On the day Mom found Cabbage, when she brought him in out of the rain, I was against the whole thing at first. Someday the cat was going to die and once again Mom would be devastated. I didn’t want her to feel so sad again so at first I didn’t think we should take in another cat. But you, Dad, felt differently.

“Why not keep it,” you said. “We all die eventually anyway, both humans and cats. Once you understand and accept that, it’s OK.”

Somewhere deep inside I always knew that in your own way, you did care about Mom’s needs. And you even felt something for Lettuce, our first cat, even though you didn’t show it the same way everyone else did. I realize now that I was wrong about you. You always said the right thing, and you were honest. I wonder if there was something about that that made me reject you.

I didn’t know how to respond, and fell silent. Then the kitten mewed and walked on its still-unsteady feet to you, Father, and you picked it up and stroked it. I remembered you would do the same with Lettuce. Mom smiled when she saw this, and when you saw that Mom was happy, you brightened up too.

“He looks just like Lettuce, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Then we’ll call him Cabbage.”

After you said this you looked all embarrassed and handed the kitten to me. Then you went back to your shop, sat down at your desk, and carried on repairing clocks.

You were the one who named Cabbage. So I’m leaving Cabbage with you, Dad.

So then I began writing this letter. My first and last letter to you, Father. It’s gotten pretty long… A long, long will and testament. It’s because there’s so much I needed to tell you, starting with the strange events of the past week, and then things about Mom, and Cabbage. There are things I’ve wanted to tell you for so long now, about me for instance.

I place a clean white sheet of paper on the desk and begin to write. At the top of the page I write –

Dear Father…

Morning came. The letter lay on the desk in front of me, finally finished. I’d written and written without eating or drinking, with Cabbage occasionally interfering by jumping up on the desk and walking on the letter as I tried to write. And now that I’m done, I’ve put the letter in an overly large envelope, and carefully picked out the stamps from my old collection. I chose a stamp with a picture of a sleeping cat on it, and stuck it to the envelope.

I picked up Cabbage and left the apartment. It was early morning and still a bit chilly as I made my way down the hill to the nearest mailbox. The red mailbox with its large mouth was waiting for me. It’s the perfect ending. Or at least it should have been. I post the letter, my father gets it, opens the envelope, and reads the letter. And in this way my father gets to know what I was thinking and feeling.

But something just wasn’t right. I stood staring blankly at the gaping mouth of the mailbox and then had second thoughts. I immediately turned and retraced my steps, back up the hill with Cabbage in tow, and back to the apartment. Out of breath from the exertion, I opened the closet and pulled out some clothes. A white shirt, striped tie, and charcoal-grey suit. It was my postman’s uniform. I put it on and looked at myself briefly in the mirror. The figure in the mirror looked a lot like my father. Over time, I had come to look just like my father. My face, posture, and gestures had all come to look just like the father I’d hated so much for so long.