The Housecat’s Last Life

By Amrutha Manoj

Kyoto, 2024.

The city folded itself into the future with unnerving grace. Its temples were still there— photographed, filtered, tagged. Its alleys still curved as they always had, but they had grown mirrors. Everything reflected back a version of itself someone else wanted to see.

I lived in a house designed to suggest emptiness. It had cost a fortune. You could tell by how little was in it. Smooth concrete floors, backlit washi panels, a single black rock in a glass bowl.

Stillness, in that house, was decorative. Not functional.

The woman who owned it—Aika—called herself a “presence architect.” In practice, this meant she built a brand out of serenity. She was an “Influencer.” She drank powdered matcha from antique bowls she didn’t know how to hold properly and told strangers online how to breathe. She said “intentional” a lot.

I am a black cat, and this was my ninth life. How did I know?

Of course I knew. All cats did. We carried our past lives the way humans carried grudges—tightly, instinctively, and with a quiet sense of superiority. It wasn’t something we discussed, obviously. No one would understand. But the knowledge was always there, lurking beneath the surface like a fish beneath ice.

Some lives stood out more than others. My third, for example—horrific. If you’ve ever wondered whether it was possible to be reincarnated as an utterly brainless, tail-chasing, joyfully slobbering dog. My sixth life? Quite the opposite. A temple cat, revered and fed delicacies on golden trays. Perfection. Until the monks ran out of funding, and I found myself on the wrong end of “budget cuts.”

I had also been a concubine in Puerto Rico, a maid in colonial India, a second wife in postwar Osaka. I had scrubbed floors, served tea, smiled when spoken to. My names had changed with every role, but the pattern had stayed—I belonged to someone. My purpose was to be chosen—kept, watched, occasionally praised, rarely asked what I wanted.

Now, in this final and ninth life, I was called Yuki. Snow. It was supposed to be poetic. Because I was black.

Aika thought in contrasts—she thought it was clever, branding-wise. She posted me against white walls and called it “intentional juxtaposition.” My fur photographed well against pale textiles. My silence suited her feed.

And then one morning, my bell collar came loose. It wasn’t a dramatic moment. I had been cleaning the underside of my neck when the clasp slipped. The bell rolled under the plant shelf and vanished behind a stack of coffee table books about silence.

I could have nudged it out. I didn’t.

Without the bell, I noticed that I moved differently. I felt the space around me instead of announcing myself to it. The absence of that small, artificial sound was almost a kind of music.

And then, I felt it. A sudden urge to leave. Eight lives had been spent in various states of tolerating human nonsense. I wanted this one to be different.

It wasn’t some grand, operatic moment of realization. No lightning bolt of truth. Just a slow, dull throb.

Aika had loved me—sort of. The way people loved expensive shoes they never wore because they pinched in all the wrong places. She liked the idea of me, the sleek, inscrutable Yuki, draped over her windowsill like a living sculpture.

I supposed the feeling had been growing for a while, the quiet discomfort of knowing I was a guest in my own existence. Every time she cooed at me in that saccharine tone, every time she reduced me to a pretty object rather than a being with teeth, claws, and opinions, it chipped away at something.

So I waited for the right opportunity. And I finally found it.

As evening fell, Natsuki—the housemaid—took the compost out. That day, she had been told to leave the gate unlatched. Aika was inside, busy filming.

The timing was perfect. I melted into the night the way only a black cat could. As Natsuki stepped out, I slipped through the gate without a sound.

And just like that, I was gone.

I had spent months dreaming of that moment, but then when I was finally there, it felt... underwhelming.

I was free. And yet, for the first time in nine lives, I felt small.

***

Kyoto’s back alleys repeated themselves like bad dreams—tile roofs, shuttered storefronts, vending machines humming under flickering lights.

The city stretched ahead like an unfurled ribbon, endless and full of possibility. The air outside Aika’s home smelled different—less like lavender detergent, more like damp stone, grilled fish, and exhaust fumes curling low to the pavement. Neon signs blinked in and out of focus. Laughter drifted from distant izakayas.

At first, moving through the night felt effortless. Without walls hemming me in, I was lighter. The air tasted like freedom. I wandered where I pleased, stopping only when I wanted to. A shrine’s stone steps made for a good perch. A laundry vent, a warm retreat.

Then came the slow unraveling. The corners blurred together. The rain came, and with it, the hunger. Scents sharpened—not enticing now, but taunting. Fried food just out of reach. The musk of other cats in territories I didn’t belong to. The reek of something rotting in a forgotten alley.

Few weeks had passed. I hadn’t eaten properly. I had fought off one cat, lost to another, and nearly got clipped by a bicycle on a blind corner. My coat was wet along the spine, and the pads of my paws had started to split. I had forgotten what it was like to feel heavy while standing still.

Every day was a test—of speed, of instinct, of knowing when to fight and when to run. Did I think of going back to Aika then? Of course, I did!

Hunger does do strange things—it sharpens instincts, but it also clouds judgment. At first, pride

kept me from turning back. Then, it was something worse—the realization that I didn’t know how to. The streets that once felt like freedom had by then become an unfamiliar labyrinth.

I tried retracing my steps at some point, searching for something familiar. But Kyoto was bigger than I had thought, and my paws had carried me further than I realized. By the time I admitted I wanted to go back, I wasn’t sure if “back” still existed.

Then came the day everything tilted.

I was resting behind a trash bin near a convenience store. Low to the ground, watching legs pass by.

Out of the blue I heard the clicking of nails against pavement. Not the light steps of another cat, not the measured tread of a passing human. Heavier, erratic. A dog.

It was a stray—lean, hungry, and desperate. Mangy, ribs jutting, eyes too bright in the dim light. It hadn’t noticed me yet, but I had seen its kind before.

I should have moved then. But my legs didn’t listen the way they used to. The dog’s ears twitched. Its nose lifted. Then, its head snapped toward me. I ran.

I darted sideways into the shadows—not toward the street, but deeper into the alleys. The ground was slick with old rain, the air thick with the scent of trash left too long.

The dog lunged. A snarl, then the scrape of claws skidding on wet pavement. Too slow. I kicked off a stack of broken crates, scrambling onto a rusted air-conditioning unit. It groaned under my weight, but I was already moving—climbing, leaping, gripping the rough concrete with my claws.

The dog barked—a sharp, ragged sound. It leapt at the wall, paws scraping uselessly at the brick.

A narrow balcony. A drainpipe slick with condensation. A sharp pull upward, my back claws slipping, catching, slipping again. My breath burned in my throat.

An open window. No screen. I dropped inside.

Concrete floor. Unlit room. Silence thick as glue.

I heard the dog linger outside for a moment, its breath loud in the narrow alley. I heard it pace below—sniffing, searching, growling low in its throat. Its claws scraped against the wall as if it had considered trying to climb. But then, with a frustrated snort, it turned sharply and trotted off, its tail flicking with irritation.

I realized safety wasn’t thrilling, or even kind. Just... a quiet kind of relief.

***

The room was still. Stale.

I hadn’t meant to go further in. I only wanted a wall to lean against. A place to be invisible for a few hours.

That’s when I heard it. Faint, irregular.

Not the sound of rats—too thin. Not human either. It came in gasps, then hiccuped into the dead quiet, then returned again, like a mewling.

I froze. Not in fear but in recognition.

The mewling grew clearer. Desperate, but tired.

In the back corner, pressed into a hollow under a splintered wooden shelf, was a damp bundle of motion.

I moved closer. There they were.

Four kittens. Barely a week old. Fur matted. Eyes unfocused. Stomachs sunken.

There was no scent of the mother. No trace of her at all—not in the air, not on their bodies. She’d been gone long enough for her smell to fade.

I watched them for a while. I didn’t move closer.

They weren’t mine. They didn’t need me. They needed someone else—someone capable. Someone softer.

I was looking for an exit.

But halfway across the room, I stopped. Something in the stillness behind me had shifted. Not the sound—just the shape of it.

I stood there with my back to them, unsure whether I was hearing them or just remembering the sound of solace.

One kitten wasn’t moving. I stepped around it.

I licked its face once. The fur tasted of mildew and dirt and something sharp underneath. It blinked. I curled my body around them. Their small limbs nudged against my ribcage like mistakes.

I didn’t purr. I tried to remind myself this wasn’t my problem. And yet, my body sank. And my eyes closed.

It was the first time in many days that sleep came easily—not as an escape, but as a welcome.

***

I already knew what the city was really like—hunger had stripped the softness from me long ago. I didn’t want to wait around for their mother. My past lives had taught me that no mother left her kids unless she had no choice. Or worse, unless she was already gone.

The place didn’t feel safe anymore. The roof leaked in three places. The air smelled of damp cardboard and insect husks. I heard rats sometimes, shifting behind the walls. Not close enough to see—but close enough to mean: not long.

I decided the kittens couldn’t stay there. I needed to find a new place. I also needed to find food. Urgently.

The storeroom had only one real exit—the way I came in. But climbing back through the window meant jumping blind into the alley where the dog had been.

I needed another way. At the far end of the room, I found a rusted service door, wedged half-shut by time and filth. I pushed against it, paws slipping on the dust-covered floor, shoulders straining as the hinges screamed.

Then—suddenly—it gave. The door scraped open just enough for me to squeeze through.

Late night was always the best time to find food in Kyoto. The city looked the other way after dark, and I disappeared more easily then—just another shadow slipping between alleys. Being black helped.

The garbage trucks had already come and gone, and the dogs hadn’t started prowling yet. I kept to the building edges, ears sharp for the silences behind walls. Most places felt too exposed, too bright—too alive in a way that had no room for me.

I turned a corner I hadn’t taken before, led more by instinct than intention.

That is when I saw it—a shuttered sentō, tucked behind a row of storage units. The bathhouse had been abandoned for months, maybe a casualty of redevelopment. Half its windows were boarded up, and the entrance was sealed with a thick padlock.

I slipped in. The air was still. Cold tile. Dust-thick silence. A crate, some wire. Nothing lived there. It was perfect.

I backed out quietly, heart already set. It was time to move the kittens.

The first one was easy—light, limp. I almost dropped her when a bark split the dark. But we made it. Next came the quiet one. Then the biter, who clamped down hard. The last barely breathed.

Each trip stretched longer. My legs shook. I hadn’t eaten. I counted breaths just to keep moving.

By the time I went back for the final one, the sky had begun to pale. Halfway there, my body folded.

Still, I kept going—carried the kitten the last fifty meters, each step dragging something out of me. My legs buckled, but I didn’t let go.

I slipped through the hatch, sides scraped by rusted metal, breath catching.

Then I curled around them, shaking—ribs pressing into their small bodies like a threadbare shield.

We were inside.

The silence wrapped around us, heavy and thick.

I found water—stale, but it shimmered. It quenched our thirst.

My hunger clawed, but I listened to the slow rise and fall of their breathing, and I stayed still. We had a place to sleep without fear.

***

I woke to movement—small, shuffling limbs pressed against my side, tiny paws kneading my fur.

My body ached. Every muscle felt wrung out, my legs stiff from the night’s strain. For a moment, I didn’t move. I just listened.

Outside, the city was already stirring—distant traffic, the low hum of power lines, the faint chatter of early risers breaking the quiet. Morning had arrived, indifferent as ever.

Then came the hunger. A deep, twisting ache, heavier than before. I swallowed hard.

I had to get up. Had to find food. I slipped out of the sentō. The air was thick with the smell of rain from the night before, the pavement still damp.

Most of the good spots were picked clean already—crows, other strays, anything desperate enough to fight for scraps. I searched anyway. I didn’t have a choice.

Eventually, I came across a market stall, shuttered for the morning. A gap beneath the front was just wide enough for me to slip through. Inside, the scent hit me fast—fish, old rice, something fried and fading. A single tray had been left behind on a low shelf, mostly empty. I picked through it— ignoring the soy sauce and the plastic wrappers, searching for anything that still resembled food.

A scrap of grilled mackerel. A cold, half-eaten onigiri. Not much, but enough to mean something.

I took what I could. I turned to leave, ducking toward the slit beneath the shutters—and then I saw her.

Aika.

Through the café window.

She looked exactly as I remembered. Linen pressed, hair pinned with soft blossoms, a teacup resting in her hand like a prop she had no intention of drinking from. And beside her, already trained in the art of stillness, was my replacement.

I froze.

I should’ve left. The food was clamped tight in my jaws, the exit still open, the moment passing.

She spoke softly to a man behind a camera, tilting her head just so. And beside her, posed like a porcelain ornament, sat a white cat—short-haired, blue-eyed, wearing a tiny sash trimmed in gold. Still. Perfect. Glossy.

I took a step forward, then caught my reflection in the glass. For a second, I didn’t recognize myself.

Scarred. Thin. Fur clumped and matted. Eyes dulled from too many nights on concrete and too many mornings like this one. The city had stripped me bare—peeled off the shine, the softness, the performance.

I didn’t know what I was waiting for. A flicker of something real in her expression? A moment of recognition? Shock? Guilt?

But there was nothing. Just the slow precision of someone rehearsed in the art of indifference.

I looked at the cat. My stand-in. A hollow echo of what I used to be. And in that moment, something inside me settled. I remembered my previous lives. I remembered the softness I once mistook for safety.

The past was accounted for.

And for the first time, I understood what freedom meant. Not escape. Not absence. But purpose. I turned from the glass. I had kittens to feed.

***

I don’t know how long it’s been. Days don’t arrive in this room. Time is counted in growth—how far they climb, how loud they argue, how much space they take up when they sleep against me in a tangled heap.

I no longer check the door for risk. Or hope. Or memory.

I don’t dream of temples. Or names. Or quiet balconies where I could have been something delicate. I dream of heat. Of food. Of where I’ll go tomorrow to find both.

Sometimes, I feel the ghosts of my old lives stir in my spine—the sensation of being held, styled, adorned, spoken for. But it passes.

Because this isn’t performance. This isn’t being chosen. This is staying.

The kittens, they didn’t ask for me. They don’t look at me like I’m theirs. They just crawl across my side like it belongs to them now. And I let them.

I haven’t given them a better world. Just this—a forgotten room, a body to lean against, a place that doesn’t demand they be anything other than noisy and alive.

It’s not enough. But it’s something.

And for the first time in nine lives, it feels like a beginning.

THE END

Author Bio: Amrutha Manoj is a writer based in Dubai. Her works explore themes of anthropomorphism, care, and resistance. She is currently pursuing an Advanced Diploma in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge and is working on a collection of speculative short fiction. She is a Data Artist. This is her blog: https://amruthamanoj.substack.com/

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