Where do cats go when they die?  Where does anybody go?  I saw some clouds rushing across the sky  and I thought that Alice was running away from me.  Where are you running?  What substance are you in now?  Does such a clear personality,  so loved by the living,  just disappear into nothing?  Or do each of your molecules contain who you are  and so that quintessence of habits,  likes and dislikes, memories and desires,  is wafted into the universe.  Why not a cloud? Or the other.  That the conglomeration of atoms  that made you are all that you were.  Together, they formed the brilliant machine  and the place behind the eyes.  But separated and scattered,  no longer held together  by the mysterious glue of life,  you are no longer. If we found the bits,  painstakingly reconstructed them  like after an airplane crash,  could I get you back?  Otherwise, it seems like such a terrible waste  for such a wonderful creature to have been formed,  one who so loved Creation  and with so much joy  and who understood its purpose  so much better than I,  and then to have it disappear.  Sickness and disaster  may be the consequences of physical nature,  and death may be the corollary of life,  but can there be no essence, no soul?  And if there is a soul, where is Alice now? And if there is someone who thinks  that only humans have souls,  shame on you.  God laughs at your pride. © 2000 by Phillip Schreibman, in  My Cat Saved My Life  Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, Publisher  Reprinted with Permission of the Author  E-mail: dogmusic@ican.net , http://www.mycatsavedmylife.com