“Lettuce!” I shouted, and rushed to pick him up. His body was warm, and he had become so thin he weighed practically nothing. His small body, with little strength left now, trembled ever so slightly. Lettuce hovered between life and death. You could tell he was scared—he couldn’t understand what was happening to him. He didn’t know that he was dying. After a while my arm started to ache, so I set him down on Mom’s lap.
Now that he was comfortable, Lettuce began to purr. He let out as much of a meow as he was capable of producing, as if to announce that this was his spot. Mom was happy to have him there and stroked him gently. Gradually he closed his eyes and the trembling stopped. He seemed revived and raised his head for a moment, looking at us both with wide eyes. Finally, he took a deep breath and laid his head down on Mom’s lap again where he became completely still, and didn’t move again.
“Lettuce!”
I called his name, trying to convince myself he was only sleeping. Maybe I thought I could wake the dead if I simply repeated his name enough times, with just the right rhythm or emphasis.
“Be quiet,” Mother said. “Don’t say a word. He’s gone to a place where there’s no more pain.”
Mom continued to stroke him gently as she said these words.
“It’s all right now, it’s all right… no more pain.”
Mom rocked back and forth as she held the cat’s still body, and the tears began to flow.
Finally the reality hit me. Lettuce was dead. He was really dead. I had to accept it. He was dead just like the rhinoceros beetles and crawdads I used to collect when I was little. After a while they’d just stop moving and that was that. In a daze I stroked his body. It was still soft and warm, and completely still.
I looked at the red collar Lettuce had worn for so long. He’d try to pull it off all the time, chewing away at it until it became worn out and ragged. Until a few moments ago it had seemed as if it too were something living, like Lettuce himself. But now suddenly it seemed like nothing more than a cold, lifeless object. Touching his collar gave me such a tangible feeling of death, I burst into tears as if to expel this unwelcome reality.
When I woke up I found that my eyes were filled with tears. It was still dark. Around 3am maybe. I looked beside me where Cabbage normally slept and saw that he was gone. I panicked and jumped out of bed, my eyes scanning the room. Then I saw Cabbage curled up asleep at the foot of the bed. As usual I hadn’t slept well. But I was relieved to find that Cabbage was still there. The memory of the night before when Aloha suggested eliminating cats was still fresh in my mind.
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.