i arrive home. the lock to my condo jams and i spend a few seconds shimmying my key aggressively. as i do so, i can hear incessant meowing from the other side of the door before it finally clicks open.

my cat is waiting in the hallway for me as he always does. the moment i open the door and he can see that it is me, he flops on the floor, belly up. a mass of beige fur, he lays there and he cries until i succumb to giving him pets.

absolutely zero survival skills. stupid fat cat.

sometimes, i wonder what immeasurable good he might have done in his past life to make him deserve his current one. constantly adored, a little too well fed, and spending his days lounging in the sun which my east-facing condo easily provides, i often think that to be reborn as him would be a privilege above all others.

i wonder what concerns he might have. the only time i ever see him distressed is when i feed him five minutes later than i usually do, or i dont give him the catnip in my room of which he is so fond of because it makes him sick.

spoilt fat cat. stupid man.

sometimes, during moments of maudlin reflection and the general existential tortures of a teenage philosopher, i lie awake and cry about the nature of morality. the ever-encroaching hand of time and the devolution of the human race, and i ponder if humans were ever supposed to gain consciousness at all, or if our awareness is simply a glitch in the matrix. questioning feels wrong. knowing feels even worse.

in these moments, i look to my cat. my unencumbered, fat cat, who i adore above all else, and i think that maybe living things were never supposed to contemplate such things—or at least never understand them. why do we torture ourselves so if we cannot control them and all they do is bring us pain? why try to grasp logos if it is inherently out of our reach? why try when we know the efforts are fruitless? we chase the unchasable. existence feels absurd, and i dont feel as if i should live in spite of it. 

i look for my cat and i pick him up. he goes limp in my arms and lets me carry him to my room, where he sleeps every night. he is soft and warm, like a fuzzy portable heater brought to life.

and yet i feel as if philosophical dilemmas are what make life worth living; is humanness not to be found in the wanderings of life and desires for wisdom? value is to be found in the melodrama of man that comes with the experience of consciousness. that beauty would never exist if it were not being beholden, and the capacity to behold is a privilege above all else. that adoring my cat and writing about him is what feels most real, and that ability to feel it at all is truth. 

he purrs, and the sound rumbles my bed ever so slightly. it soothes my soul.

sometimes, i catch him staring at me as he sits in his designated seat in my room. he looks at me as if he wishes he could speak, and i wonder if he has curiosities about me or if he even has the capacity to wonder. perhaps the desire to redeem ourselves from our sins and consequently escape human consciousness has the same end goal as the desire to be as unknowing, unaware, and ignorant as my cat. 

i look back at him.

i think he gets it.