Lazy bastards. Cats. All they do is sprawl out in shafts of sunlight like they own the world—because, in some unspeakable, infuriating way, they do. It’s not envy, not exactly. More like reluctant reverence. I watch them with their slow blinks and casual disregard for everything that demands urgency in a human life, and I think: God, let me be that next time.
If there’s an afterlife—if this universe owes us any justice at all—I want out of this skin. Reincarnate me. Strip me of ambition and anxiety, of the gnawing hunger to matter. Make me a cat in someone’s backyard, basking in dandelions and overgrown grass, twitching my tail at passing dragonflies like I’ve got all the time in the world. Let me roll on warm concrete, belly exposed in the ultimate act of trust, purring not out of contentment but as a declaration of territory.
Not even the grandest visions of heaven could tempt me otherwise. Give me this one small, feral freedom. There’s a kind of holiness in the way cats move—aloof and unimpressed by gods or mortals—that makes me wonder if they’re the only creatures who got life right. And maybe, deep down, I don’t want eternal peace or salvation. Maybe I just want to nap in a sunbeam without anyone needing anything from me.
Let the next life be small. Let it be simple. Let it be feline.