If Cats Disappeared from the World: A Novel

Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who has changed, and seeing the same film again makes that impossible to forget.

Human beings went through the trouble of inventing rules that imposed limits on their lives, boxing them up into hours, days, and years. And then they invented clocks to make time’s rule over us even more precise.

However, when you think about it, a human being can never really grieve their own death. Death is always something that happens to other people around them.

My whole life will be summed up in those moments that I won’t be around to see—the time after I’m dead.

A lot of people buy into the slogan “Live life like there’s no tomorrow.” But I tend to disagree. Once you become aware of your impending death, you have to make a compromise in accepting the loss of the life you wish you could have led and the reality of your imminent death. Sure, there will always be regrets and broken dreams, but you have to go

People are fickle that way. Something they once valued becomes meaningless almost overnight. Even the most treasured presents, letters, and memories are forgotten about, eventually becoming useless odds and ends.

To live means to cry, to shout, to love, to do silly things, to feel sadness and joy, to laugh, even to experience horrible, frightening things. Beautiful songs, beautiful scenery, nausea, people singing, planes flying across the sky, the thundering hooves of horses, mouthwatering pancakes, the endless darkness of space, cowboys firing their pistol