The sun cowered behind the clouds with no silver lining, and my owner popped yet another can of tuna to satisfy my gluttony as a spoiled house cat. Cats, such as myself, are, more often than not, generalised as a species that keeps a lid on things. On the contrary, my past lives have shaped me to have a slightly varying outlook on some stuff.
A cheerful, outgoing and social cat is a standpoint most people cannot imagine, but that’s simply because I’m different. The enigmatic phrase ‘A cat has nine lives”, well… such an inconceivable thing might be true in rare cases; trust an old man. The fact of the matter is that in terms of consciousness, memory and maturity, I am over 92 human years old. That means my knowledge and conscience as a creature are a step above most living things. The superiority complex and condescending approach to things come from my experience of having died eight times in my past lives already…and still having a coherent memory of it all.
In my incredibly strenuous life(or lives), I have learnt that time is not relative in the long run and is too fast.
Over nine decades of living seems long; it is, but one’s perception of days, hours and minutes becomes subjective. Time seems slow in dull moments and fast when you’re having fun, and it seems to fly past when absorbed in the moment and stops…when something extreme or tragic happens. Indeed everyone longs to listen to a philosophical feline now and then?
I have been living in a spun-out biography of my existence. On countless occasions, I cursed fate for being a special cat that remembered its efficacies and many tragedies of multiple lives. Unsurprisingly, this caused me to go blind sometimes. Blind to all the positive aspects and how that caused me to grow as an individual.
After all this blasphemous repetitive death, your mental fortitude gets an upgrade. Suddenly, you realise that you aren’t as profoundly affected. Cataclysmic things phase you less and less each time, and the phenomenon is psychologically unsettling. Being aware that ‘bad things’ no longer get you worked up instils a sense of self-concern and drives you insane at times.
Despite all my self-proclaimed ‘kitten-wisdom’, I never truly understood the fast-paced lives of humans. This species, which happens to be the apex of the modern food chain, has a highly obsolete approach. As a 1-foot-tall domestic creature, seeing beings almost five times taller than me that never ‘live in the present’ is weird. Millions of years of evolution to reach the current pinnacle of science and technology, and yet it’s their future or past that drives them. Human conscience keeps oscillating towards arbitrary people and their thoughts while chasing fame and trying to live an easier life. How do I make sense of a species this bizarre?
On occasion, I get a profound sense of gratification. It knows I am on my 9th life; it will be absolute when I die. My learning has given me rational knowledge beyond what most humans achieve in their entire life. This has helped me accept that I will no longer reincarnate in the body of another cat again; with my memories.
I now savour every bite of cat food, every ray of mellow sunshine and every ounce of affection from my owner. Why am I not sad that these small pleasures will soon cease to exist in my world? Maybe I’m just longing for liberation.
