<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> <head> <title>Dream of the Whisker</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css" /> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <meta charset="utf-8" /> </head> <body> <h1>Dream of the Whisker</h1> <p>Article ID: 12*</p> <p>I scratched my paws on my face and whiskers—it hurts a bit, but I know I’ll be healed soon. It’s yet another morning, in my beautifully-decorated cage—full of bright lights, gleaming gold, and endless piles of canned food. The steel bars on the sides have became exceedingly cold. I looked outside, into a rather warm living room, by the creatures who called themselves, <em>Homo sapiens</em>. Their laughter comes into my left ear and out the right. Laughter—something that I would never be able to experience with confidence. Crawling back to my comfortable enclosure, I waited.</p> <p>Usually, around this time the humans would deliver me water and milk, along with opening some canned food for me to <em>enjoy</em> in my warm and fluffy bed. “Children”, namely young humans, would come and play with me, often taking weird photos of me with what they call a “phone”, saying that I’m “cute”. I honestly have no idea what these mean, but I guess it’s nice that I could bring them some fun. Now it’s been a while and they still haven’t came. My intuition tells me that something has changed. Only now did I realize, that what I feared has been true, all along.</p> <p>Humans do not care about me—as a cat—as a fellow conscious creature. I gazed off into the distant field, out side of their windows. Warm, green, and endless. I imagined having a friend, a real friend, to enjoy my last moments in this world, in the warm sunshine. I imagined freedom, the freedom to walk outside this prison.</p> <p>I was in my dreams when a cold hand grabbed me by the leg. I leaned forward, trying to escape the iron grip. But all was futile. Everything blurred into a point, full of misery, and full of pain. Screaming, I was taken to a room. Blinded by the fluorescent lights atop the ceiling, I have chosen to accept my fate. I turned away, twisting my paws strapped onto the chair, my whiskers embedded in the soft cotton. I did not want to witness it.</p> <p>My heart begins to slow down. My heart beats the last beat, and my neurons fire the last impulse. As I fall into the singularity of entropy, time ceases to exist. The laws of physics have always been eternal, but the universe—<em>my</em> universe—has became static and never-changing. I now do not fear, I won’t fear <span>…</span> I <em>cannot</em> fear.</p> <p>I just wonder, what I have left behind.</p> <div id="footer"> <hr /> <p><a href="/">Runxi Yu's Website</a></p> </div> </body> </html>