There, but for the grace of god...
I left the house this morning, already slightly late for work. For no reason that I can relate, I decided to walk up the other side of the street. I crossed the street, and hadn't gone ten steps before an orange-and-white cat materialized from an alley and ran up to me.

He could have been Naranjito's brother. He was slightly bigger, his face slightly longer, but he had almost the same coloring, even down to the white patches on his face, neck, belly, and paws. He was more solid orange than Naran, with stripes only evident on his tail.

He ran right up to me just as if he knew me and was being super-affectionate, climbing on me and purring. I could tell that he was hungry, and sick; there were places on his back where his fur was all patchy, and he had some kind of sores near his rectum. A woman who was walking by stopped, and after seeing the situation, went back to her house to get some food for him. We talked about the sad situation of these feral cat colonies. Her name was Linda.

He ate ravenously. After Linda left, I petted him for a few minutes, noticing how he was shivering in the cold, how he cringed away from loud noises and other humans who passed by. I couldn't bear to just leave him there, but there was nothing else I could do. I knew I couldn't keep him and that he wouldn't be adoptable; if he turned out to really be sick, it was likely he'd just be put down. And I knew, moreover, that even if I did rescue this one, he would only be replaced by another unwanted cat. The feral colonies can't be eradicated; they replenish their numbers to the maximum sustainable. Even if you trap and remove all the cats, others move in from overfull colonies somewhere nearby. However many you save, however much you do, there will always be more of them, untold numbers: living short, miserable lives in the street, and dying there, unremarked.

I tried to say something flippant to him as I left, like "take care of yourself" or "let me know if you need anything"; the sort of thing I always say to the strays I meet, because I feel like every stray's mommy. But this time, the words stuck in my throat. I knew I was leaving him to his death, if not right away, then sometime soon. I couldn't have been more broken-hearted if it was my own child I'd been leaving there, shivering on the sidewalk.

Now tell me. There is justice. In the world.

  "I know this," Isaac Penn asserted. "I've seen such things far more often than you have. You forget that I was a poorer man than you have ever been, for a longer time than you have yet lived. I had a father and a mother, and brothers and sisters, and they all died young, too soon. I know all these things. Do you think I'm a fool? In The Sun we bring injustices to the attention of the public, and suggest sensible means to correct inequities where they serve no purpose. I realize that there is too much needless and cruel suffering. But you, you don't seem to understand that these people whom you profess to champion have, in their struggles, compensations."
  "What compensations?"
  "Their movements, passions, emotions; their captured bodies and captured senses are directed with no less certainty than the microscopic details of the seasons, or the infinitesimal components of the city's great and single motion. They are, in their seemingly random actions, part of a plan. Don't you know that?"
  "I see no justice in that plan."
  "Who said," lashed out Isaac Penn, "that you, a man, can always perceive justice? Who said that justice is what you imagine? Can you be sure that you know it when you see it, that you will live long enough to recognize the decisive thunder of its occurrence, that it can be manifest within a generation, within ten generations, within the entire span of human existence? What you are talking about is common sense, not justice. Justice is higher and not as easy to understand -- until it presents itself in unmistakable splendor. The design of which I speak is far above our understanding. But we can sometimes feel its presence.
  "No choreographer, no architect, engineer, or painter could plan more thoroughly and subtly. Every action and every scene has its purpose. And the less power one has, the closer he is to the great waves that sweep through all things, patiently preparing them for the approach of a future signified not by simple human equity (a child could think of that), but by luminous and surprising connections that we have not imagined, by illustrations terrifying and benevolent -- a golden age that will show not what we wish, but some bare awkward truth upon which rests everything that ever was and everything that ever will be. There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery. We try to bring it about without knowing exactly what it is, and only touch upon it. No matter, for all the flames and sparks of justice throughout all time reach to invigorate unseen epochs -- like engines whose power glides on hidden lines to upwell against the dark in distant cities unaware."