The Cat by The Ledge

Life is just a series of blank white. We were born atop a white sheet in a white room and we will soon lie below one before everything goes blank. Every single transformation and change, bloom and wilt, happens in a veil of white, invisible to the waves of time and eye of the world, from our innocence to our radio silence. What’s the point of remembering us, if there is no paint to spit, splatter, and slash itself onto the canvas?

I cannot remember my childhood; not that there is anything worthy for me to remember. All I could remember was the snow that fell every single year, where the world went into silence, as if mourning for the memories that will soon be covered up and washed away when spring comes. I lost my father that way - he went out one snowy day; and just like that, he disappeared into the thickening snow. The last thing he ever left? His black shadow he laid on the deafening whiteness before - and even it had followed him into the void right after.

No one could be spared in this roulette from Thanatos, and when it inevitably lands on you, you could only watch as everything silently draws its last breath within my blind spot of acceptance, like a knife through my back that I cannot reach.

Thus, my world is just made of blinding white snow that stayed that day.

I am back in my village, now put together with a big city nearby to merge into a flaky monstrosity of a rural residential area. What had once been hiding in the little concrete townhouses had now lost themselves within the volumes of the towering heights.

Now I had to live on the twenty-third floor of a gargantuan forty-five story apartment, pockets empty, and without anything for me to recall who I am anymore. It’s as if I had fallen into the snow as well, without anyone knowing who I am - not even me - anymore. I am some living thing that even forgot how his teenage-face looked like in the puddle of snowmelt in spring - the unfamiliar person in the mirror I had to get used to seeing every morning.

Life moves too fast for everyone to catch on, like a peak hour bus that can only hold the dreams of the people that still have any energy to believe in it. I go up to the rooftop and see the faces everyday that had been bruised, squeezed onto those buses without being able to check for the route number, in the end going mindlessly … into the next whitening sky again. How foolish, I thought to myself everyday as I watched the peak hour flow under the setting sun, seeing those arched-backed poor rats trying to survive their paycheck, seeing their money melt just by them existing.

However, today I was not alone. What greeted me first - instead of those fatigued faces from below - was a black cat.

“Here you are,” said the cat, turning back from the ledge and eyeing me before looking back out again, “I have been eyeing you for a while now.

You have such a generic face, yet something about you just screams cold and unloved”.

“Oh yeah”, I retorted, trying to regain some footing after the snarky remark, “as if you don’t look like some generic black cat on the streets”.

“You have a big attitude for someone like you,” snapped the cat, swishing his tail in slight annoyance. Still, without turning back, he said, “Cats are way better at telling facial structures you know.”

He has a neat groom of short black fur, and his thin serpent-pupils that fit itself perfectly in its round yellow eyes had made him look like some high priest or god of some kind. Come to think of it, he does act differently than many cats I may have seen, not to mention the talking.

Soon the sky began to darken, and a rush of cold wind blew by.

“Do you like to watch people that go about their lives too?” I asked while walking to the ledge next to the cat, somehow feeling awkward after our exchange fell into silence.

“If I don’t, I won’t be here; and neither would you”, said the cat, who began to lick his paws, his face finally turned towards me but facing down, “sometimes I wonder why people care so much about something that is so temporary - they come in with nothing and leave with nothing.” I stood by him, hands crossed on the ledge. This encounter had been enough for me to stay and watch every light in the buildings around us turn on for the first time after everyone returned to their homes. Each with a story and a connection.

“Perhaps there is something they bring when they die,” I said, looking at the lights of different shades of yellow, each proudly showing its history through its age, “they always say you’ll bring the memories, right?”

“You are a sad man,” said that cat, “you change your stance so quickly. Such feebleness. Didn’t your father leave you alone that snowy day?”

“How did you know?”

“Don’t underestimate a cat, foolish human. I know more things about people than you will ever imagine. After your father died, your mother soon died of a broken heart the next winter. You ended up under your relatives' wing, where they treated you like a bad omen before disposing of you when the law couldn’t cover you. Why’d you think you’d come back here? It is no coincidence - somewhere deep inside you, you want to find something again; something that was part of you. Blame your own kind, then, for losing that with a few layers of time”. With that, some snow began to land on this mysterious cat, covering his head and back little by little.

“Let’s face it, there is nothing left for you to be here for.” He continued, “There is nothing for you to attach yourself to anymore. See this city of lights, and yet your apartment will forever be unlit unless you touch that cold switch yourself. You’ve never gone through the colours of time. Stop throwing yourself some false hopes and white lies to save yourself in this drowning town. Your life is as blank as if you had never lived before.”

I said nothing but looked straight ahead, knowing that I had people-watched so much just to escape that empty apartment of mine. There will be silence there today, just like yesterday and the day before, the only noise leaking in from the flats around me, bustling with people that they know.

“Perhaps life had treated you too poorly,” said the cat, now looking straight at me, his pupils slowly expanding. The snow began to hit harder as his head became fully white, and probably mine too, but I did not care.

The cat was right. There was nothing left for me to squeeze any more colours into this life.

“So why don’t you put your hand in mine. I am here to pick you up today. We will bring this boring life to an end today. You’ll have me around, so don’t be scared, okay? This will be your final goodbye, but there is nothing to lose.”

I looked with eyes of uncertainty at the cat, but his eyes were so peaceful somehow - with his puffed up pupils and watery eyes - as peaceful as the snow that now covered the whole roof. Somehow, I just wanted to take his hand, and end up with the sun as we both fall under the horizon of time.

Perhaps this life was as good as not living. I nodded my head, and with one hand I held that cat’s outstretched palm. His hands were a warmth that I could not explain except for a fuzzy pleasant static in my heart. Regardless, I am not scared to face the dark anymore with someone there, be it a cat or not. The snow began pouring harder and harder, but I am not scared anymore. Today will be the day that I race into the night, into the black that will finally add one streak of colour to my otherwise unadorned white.

“Join me anyway. Pathetic humans; they’re so busy minding their own steps that they forget to look up at another’s face. No wonder they feel so cold; if their breaths are always pointed downwards. That’s why their faces are becoming more bland. Ready? We will do it on the count of three.”

I looked into the cat’s eyes, and he gave a smile back. Soon I grasped his hands tightly as the snow soon covered both of our footprints on the ledge of the roof.