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  • Writer's pictureCarlo Rey Lacsamana

In Memory of Luis and His Animals and The Weak and The Other



As I write this my cat, Zorba, is sitting on my lap and purring with delight as I shower his furry head with masterful kisses.


I have so much loved the book, The Story of A Seagull and The Cat Who Taught Her To Fly, by the great Chilean writer, Luis Sepulveda who pitifully succumbed to Covid-19 last year. As with fables, it stamps in the reader a wondering, grateful albeit pain-inflicted attitude towards life through the candid voices of animals. If we are to look into literature an outstanding quality and benefit it is this: its capacity to amplify the presence of other living beings be they animals, plants, trees, mountains, rivers, and other peoples. Life is appreciated in its breathtaking vastness and dependencies, in its differences and dissonances, and ultimately in its singularly unique beauty.


“We've learnt to appreciate and respect and love someone who's different from us. It is very easy to accept and love those who are like us, but to love someone different is very hard, and you helped us to do that.”

― Luis Sepúlveda, The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly


Not even today’s famed Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s book Kafka On The Shore, has given cats their convincing noble expression than Luis Sepulveda’s. It was the latter who gave cats their modern day literary significance and increased their aesthetic charm in spite of their gratuitous, sinister bursts of cruelty which involves scratches and bites and heart-stopping ambushes. Cats’ domestic presence warms, diverts and (considering many noted writers and artists kept cats in their house) inspires us.


Sepulveda’s book has moved me intensely that every time I hear my cat makes nasty meows I hear echoes of the character’s words, “Only those who dare may fly.”


As for seagulls, despite Sepulveda’s successful literary language, they can be attractive as they can be disquieting.


A couple of days ago after a sunny jog with my friend we came across a lawn in which a beautiful lone seagull very much identical to Sepulveda’s Lucky was pecking sturdily on something unidentifiable underneath the low grass. My friend eyeing the creature with curiosity noticed that the thing being pecked on had feathers on it.


We deiced to get closer enough to be able to observe at close range without frightening the seagull. With shock my friend uttered in a disgusted voice: “The motherfucker is eating a pigeon!”


It was shocking to see its long yellow beak soaked in blood as it tore the pigeon’s flesh apart. We know that seagulls are predators, that they prey on fish and smaller birds, but to see its predatory appetite in reality was quite disquieting and disappointing. So fixed was I on the literary qualities of a seagull that to witness its natural operation seemed ignoble.


This is the often dangerous power of literature: its capacity to transform viciousness into beauty.


This tiny little book is also a profound meditation on solidarity, sustaining the weak, and loving the other. Today, as the already wrecked city of Gaza is being turned into rubble by the vicious high-tech airstrike bombing by the most cowardly country in the world, Israel, this meditation on solidarity and loving the other (the Palestinians) is the most urgent and hopeful message we need in these times of indifference and barbarity.




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