Los Animales del Mundo, part II

Los Animales del Mundo, part II | June 29, 2025

Jimbaran Beach, November 2024

Canang sari are the everyday offerings that pepper the island of Bali. They are small, woven baskets which are filled with food, flowers, and other such items; the baskets are left on curbsides, in doorways, beneath statues, underneath trees, and in all of the places that the gods might occupy. They symbolize gratitude towards the deities and present an offering of appeasement in effort to maintain balance between spirit, man, and nature. Their ubiquity lets them blend seamlessly into the landscape of Bali, fresh and lovely in the morning, moving towards disintegration and spoilage as they day progresses. Insects, monkeys, birds, and other animals pick them apart and scatter the remains. Old canang sari litter the streets, gutters, and beaches as they dry up and blow away in the turbulence of scooter traffic and pedestrian's feet. Part of the beauty of the offerings lies in their transience; the verdant plumage and fresh food of the new contrasts with the desiccation and decay of the old. Such is the manifestation of the gods' consumption of the gifts. 

~

The kittens play besides the hole. 

I'm watching them from my uncomfortable seat in a plastic chair a couple yards away. They're playfully scurrying around, pouncing and running across the sand. I count two, although I think I saw their mother earlier. She slunk up the nearby concrete stairs and into the darkness a few minutes ago. 

I'm sitting at an outdoor table at a seafood restaurant on Jimbaran Beach. I don't want to be here - I don't much like seafood - but didn't feel like I had a choice in the matter. I had signed up for a tour to Uluwatu Temple and going to this restaurant afterwards was part of the schtick. My husband hadn't wanted to go at all, so it was just me and an elderly Mexican lady who had enjoyed the temple and were then shuttled to this pre-arranged restaurant on the beach. Now, dusk is falling and an obnoxious band is shuffling in between the tables, singing off-key and holding out a hat for money. My companion claps her hands as the ensemble begins their Indonesian rendition of a Ricky Martin song. They notice her enthusiasm and inch closer to us. I feel bad for thinking them obnoxious - they're making their living and bringing enjoyment in a beautiful setting. More than that, they're finding a way to persist amidst the gentrification of their homeland, catering to the tourists that have swarmed the Balinese beaches and resulted in the overdevelopment that has plagued the greater Denpasar area. I'm probably more on edge than unusual because I'd rather be back at my hotel. 

Torches light the beach and reflect off the white sands, mirroring the reflection of the setting sun on the calm waves. We had originally been seated at a table right by the waters edge, but the lapping wake had drawn noticeably closer in a short amount of time, so we picked up our things and moved up shore. We're now situated at a table close to the restaurant's open-air breezeway that runs between the beach seating and the interior of the restaurant. Staff with huge platters of seafood move quickly from the kitchens down the breezeway, feet sinking into the sand as they step off the concrete and walk towards the patrons on the beach. The flickering of the torch light casts strange shadows across their faces as they quickly move to serve the plates of crab, shrimp, octopus, and fish to the waiting customers. Meanwhile, small, multicolored cats gambol along the exterior of the restaurant. Mere kittens, they chase each others tails and bat around pieces of plastic. The silhouettes of larger felines can be seen in the flickering shadows - the wiser cats who watch, and wait, observing their surroundings and darting out to grab a dropped piece of fish. Occasionally, a cat will scurry around a server's feet as they move to distribute their heavy platters. 

I know I'm being rude to my tablemate, and likely coming across as weird. It must appear that I'm staring over my right shoulder towards the dark building wall, avoiding eye contact and not eating the food that was served to me. But, I have no interest in the seafood, and I'm entranced by the scene. I'm watching the cats. 

I take notice as a worker steps away from the organized chaos and walks towards the darkened area with the kittens. As he moves into my direct line of sight and stops next to the wall, I see that he carries a shovel, which is out of place with the rest of the restaurant scene. The kittens scatter as he quickly swings the shovel down and plunges it into the sand. He quickly digs a small hole, perhaps a foot in diameter. I can't tell how deep it is from where I'm sitting; the shadows are too deep to gauge the depth. He lifts his shovel, bends down, and places an item in the hole. The worker apparently finishes his task because he turns away and returns to the well-lit breezeway with his shovel. He walks back into the restaurant and out of my view. Soon after he leaves, the kittens return to the area and resume their play, this time incorporating the hole into their games. The leap into and out of the hole, and race around the sandy mound of spoils.

I wait to see if the worker will return, but as the minutes creep by with no sign of him, my curiosity gets the better of me. I want to know what's in that hole. Before rising from my chair to investigate, I move my gaze to my plate and select a piece of calamari to feed to the cats. I pull the breading off, because breading isn't good for them. 

Thus armed, I walk away from the torchlight and towards the darkened wall. The sand is soft and pliant as it moulds to my sandaled feet, caressing the bare toes. The kittens disperse at my approach and scurry around a corner of the wall. A small head peaks back around and watches me with untamed eyes as I bend down to look at the pit in the sand. I have to tilt my head and crouch closer to get a clear view amidst the shadows, but my eyes adjust and a flicker of torchlight reveals the mysterious object. 

A dead kitten lies in the bottom of the hole. It's tiny body appears broken, though no blood or bones are readily seen. The coat is orange, or perhaps cream, or white - the colors are difficult to distinguish in the poor lighting. I realize that the other kittens had been jumping and playing on the corpse, using it for their frivolity and kittenish whims just as they do with the rest of the landscape. I stand up quickly but continue staring into the hole at the tiny animal, and my thoughts begin to race. I'm immediately suspicious, and angry. Why would this burial pit be dug at the edge of the restaurant, in the shadows and out of sight? In milliseconds, I'm imagining a scenario where a worker has killed the kitten in a rage, perhaps kicking it out of anger that it was in the kitchens, or stealing food, or underfoot, or some other reason. I think of the horror stories that pass through the news and social media and word of mouth, true stories of cruelty and hideousness that I try so hard to avoid, but which still find their way to my awareness. Try as I might to avoid them, snippets from the stories worm into my brain and fester, reemerging in my nightmares. Some of my more frequently-recurring dreams involve coming across tortured and mutilated cats, still alive and in agony, rendering me helpless as I agonize over how to kill them with my bare hands to spare them the misery of further suffering. I have always had nightmares about this. Thirty years later, I can still remember a dream from early childhood, where my dreamself looked out the dining room window to see my beloved cat, emaciated and slowly dragging himself along the deck as the bones from his rib cage fell away from his body. 

Then, and now, I wake up sobbing and shaking after I have these dreams. I don't know why my mind tortures me with these images. Dreams are the subconsciousness' way of processing reality, and the reduced ability to censor the id bubbles up into symbolic and obtuse nightmarish representations of our deepest thoughts. Reading about and seeing the horror that humanity has wrought on animals and the environment is so disturbing.... my subconscious processes this daily and churns the dreams out in response. The sheer magnitude of suffering that occurs on this hunk of rock is overwhelming, to the point that shutting down is the only effective means of coping with this on a daily basis. What other option is there? Acceptance? Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change? What cruelty of the universe exists, to offer this as the singular option of reconciling the brutality of consciousness with the fragility of life? It never ceases and the world spins on, complete with the death, suffering, and exploitation of animals, the environmental destruction and proliferation of garbage and pollution, and the knowledge that we - humanity - have single-handedly invited this into our house, our collective experience. 

The broken body in the sandy pit receives my thoughts; they wash over the vessel whose contents have passed out of this realm and into the mysteries of the universe. I slowly become aware of movement to my left and the sounds of laughter, the off-key Ricky Martin song, the lapping of waves and hush of sandy feet, reenter my consciousness. Movement stirs at the edge of my peripheral vision, and I look up and see the worker walking towards me. I straighten and gesture to the dead kitten, unable to keep the brusqueness from my voice. 

"What happened?" 

He stops next to me and as we together stand by the edge of the hole, looks earnestly at my face. I brace myself for whatever he might say.

"She was hit by car. We find her on road in front. I bury her." 

Not with a smile, but rather a soft look, he glances down and then stoops over. With one hand, he pushes the sandy pile over the top of the kitten, covering the body and filling the hole. I suddenly notice that he carries a canang sari in his other hand, which he carefully places on the grave. 

Realization sets in as my uncharitable assumptions are fiercely corrected by the kindness and respect that I witness. I am humbled in the face of this gesture. I mumble something and retreat back to my plastic seat a few yards away. The gesture of the burial and the significance of the offering causes my throat to tighten, and I continue to watch as the worker stick a piece of incense into the sand next to the canang sari. He lights it, and then goes back into the restaurant with an air of finality. The darkness near the wall returns to stillness. 

I sit in my uncomfortable chair, tilted on the uneven sand. I stare back toward the little piece of beach where so much just transpired, but where, now, one would not even bother with a second glance at the canang sari that now sits on the sand. It looks like the millions of others across Bali, the ones that pervade the landscape and meld into their surroundings. The disturbed sand of the burial pit has started to dry; the circle of the filled hole slowly becomes indistinguishable from the surrounding earth. The canang sari and the incense rest in that drying circle, in the shadow of the building and the edge of the torchlight. Unless you saw the dead kitten placed in the hole, you would never guess what the incense smoke now wafts over. 

Time moves on, as it does. I find a piece of fish on my plate and begin to eat, and make small talk with the Mexican grandma. We enjoy the atmosphere and watch the band move between the tables, seeking other patrons to serenade out of a few rupiahs. But I keep glancing at the incense, its orange ember glowing in the dark. So, I notice when the cats begin to reemerge from the shadows. An adult cat pokes its head around the corner. The wild eyed kittens creep back to their original play spot and cautiously investigate the offerings. One stretches its neck, gently lifts a morsel of food from the canang sari, and backs away. Over the grave of its brethren, it begins to eat. 

These are the gods we feed.