To the cat that got killed under my back wheel...

My heart bleeds for you. You know that. And it’s hard to explain how I feel about this. I was pulling over into the parking lot fronting my office and never had the chance to see you coming. If I did, you can be sure I will do everything to avoid you from getting crushed under the back wheel.

I live my life dedicated to the personal mantra that I had adopted ever since I was a child; that is to treat everyone with gentleness and respect. And that personal philosophy does not extend to people alone but to all of life itself, which would include even the tiniest insect. Heck, I would levitate if I can for my feet not to touch the ground and bring harm to what I couldn’t see lurking in my path. I feel that if you have the power to eat, drink and live today, you must have a purpose to be sent to this world bearing the gift of life.

Otherwise, you would have ended up a piece of rock, a thing bound to be around for the ages but without moving, without feeling, without consciousness, simple as that, just a cold lifeless piece of rock. Or perhaps you can be the thunderbolt, the thing with the fastest movement but with the shortest life. If you were a rock, my back wheel would have rolled over you without leaving as much of a souvenir as a slight scratch. If you were the lightning bolt, I would have been in serious trouble. But no. You were a proud cat, a feline of the class pantera, member of kingdom animalia, (whatever that means), and because of what I did, the consequence is this; this miserable way that I feel now, the feeling that I had done a dissacrelege, that I had defiled something pure and innocent, that I had disrupted the universal order, the cycle of life so profound and great everything else is subservient to it, and in its depth and vastness both of us and every other creature for that matter would pale in significance when taken in isolation, removed from the great big boundless scheme of things. If I go to court because of this, then I would probably tell the judge you where nowhere to be seen when I approached the parking space, and let me stress this point – that I did so, slowly and carefully – yet it just couldn’t be avoided because in all likelihood, you must have sneaked up from under the car, reducing any chance of my catching a split-second glance at you, which is consistent with the horrible outcome of my rear wheel catching you. If this reasoning should fail, I wish I could just say it's curiosity, not me, that killed the cat.

Believe me, I don’t feel right telling this and rewinding in some deep dark inner recesses of my brain every single scene. Some people would react to the incident with hardly anything more than a shrug of the shoulder and then perhaps they charge it to experience and move on. But not me. My problem is me. A cat is dead and I do give a damn about it and I have in fact been losing precious sleep over it. From now on, there will be no more licking and romancing on rooftops for you and your girlfriend-cat. Your rat-chasing days are definitely over. You’ll never get to see the little bundle of baby-cats that would be born from all your acts of indiscretion. There’ll be no more kitchen raids in the dead of night for you that's for sure. And that's all because of me. I had assumed you are a boy-cat since, in my self-styled theory of human behavior, which by analogy should apply to animals too, the male of the species is the most prone to such wanton recklessness and disregard for personal safety, like getting killed in broad daylight under a slow-moving vehicle. You are, in my youth particularly, the cat version of me.

I wish I could say my piece, my apology in a language you can comprehend, dead or alive if only to lessen the pain that swept both of us, which in your case was horrific but rather quick whereas mine was not as deep but would surely last. There is something else I’d like also to tell you if somehow it can still be done. The difference between you and me now is that now you’re dead while I’m alive, now you’re history while I’m here, still here living and walking and breathing the same obnoxious air and condemned to go on living perhaps for a few more years this miserable life to which another chapter of misery has just been added by your passing and for which I am driven to insufferable confusion trying to regurgitate the significance of my becoming the reason to your doom, why of all people it had to be me. If this is part of the grand design, then I must protest and rage against the way I’m treated. Screw the grand design. I would have to stir up a storm and agitate people like me into action, all of us that were shortchanged by destiny. There is more to life than being the cat-killer.

Wait a minute, you got nine lives, right? Well, you certainly can use one right now. Do me a favor will you? I beg you, please, get the hell back to life and spare me the lifetime of conscience-pricking. My heart bleeds for you. You know that. I do give a damn about your death.

So please… Please... Get the hell back to life or I’m gonna kill you…