The Stoned Cat

In my building, people have a hard time believing that a drug dealer lives in a middle-class bougie neighbourhood. But he does.

And he is my neighbour. He lives in apartment 8B.

I figure he can’t be too bad. A couple of years ago, a stray kitten was roaming the hallways. The dealer took him to the vet. The kitten did not have a tag or a microchip implant to identify his owner. And this is how a 38-year-old drug man named Samuel Zachary adopted the stray. Being a female, she was named Weedette.

Samuel is almost the perfect neighbour: he is a clean freak, he is quiet, and he is a cat lover. However, I have a hard time tolerating Samuel’s heavy-cooking odours. Luckily, he only cooks once a week, and when he does, his neighbours can be found walking idly around the building, killing time. They wait for the fire trucks to arrive.

It is probably the joints he smokes that put him out.

Nevertheless, he has become public enemy number one among the neighbours. He gets fined by the building for each fire department visit. He pays, though. He owns many legal pot shops. I guess they must be lucrative.

He also tends to leave his keys in the door before he leaves for work in the morning. I am usually the one to lock up for him. His cat also manages to escape when he leaves in the morning. But Weedette walks in zigzagging patterns. She must get high, too, from the second-hand smoke. When she stabilizes, Weedette comes and scratches at my door, insisting on coming inside my flat, to explore and play.

But I feel uneasy around this cat. She has these deep green eyes that see right through you. It is unnerving. Nevertheless, I let her in for companionship. I have been working remotely lately as a Customer Service representative. The doctors are not sure why I have this heavy fatigue.

Luckily, my employer also gave me the day off for my 35^th birthday. I couldn’t wait to sleep in. But sadly, I was awoken by loud knocking noises on my front door.

It was Mrs. Millstein, wearing a pink robe, green slippers, and yellow sponge foam curlers. She would have made the late Mrs. Roper, a character from the 1970s show Three’s Company, look like a fashionista.

“I brought you your pills,” she said,

“What are you talking about?”

She did not answer me back. Then, suddenly, the building’s owner appeared, Stuart Starr.

“Samuel will be out of town for an indefinite period. Would you mind if the cat stayed with you? It would be better if the cat didn’t roam the halls.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Is Samuel okay?”

“Oh yes, it’s nothing for you to worry about.”

This is how I became a cat sitter for Weedette. A cat that probably needed a drug rehabilitation center. I went to lie down to rest for a bit on my sofa. It was definitely not the birthday that I had planned for myself.

Weedette then jumped on my chest. I must admit that I did not enjoy being scrutinized by this cat one bit. It is at that point that we began a long staring contest. Minutes later, my vision changed in a split second. It became scrambled like on those old analog TV sets from the 1970s. I saw the world statically. To make it even worse, I began seeing flashing disco lights.

My heart started pounding boom, boom, boom. I pushed Weedette off me, and I got up and did a pirouette in my studio apartment without any reasonable explanation. To my utter horror, suddenly, thousands of carpenter aunts appeared and crawled against my ceiling, walls, and floor. I closed my eyes, hoping that it was a hallucination.

But upon opening my eyes, I noticed my walls began cracking, and the floor beneath my feet started dissolving. I grabbed Weedette and jumped up to hold on to my chandelier for safety.

It was then that I lost consciousness and somehow regained it on a street bench on McGill College Avenue. It was no longer spring but fall. I was shivering in my white gown. Confused, I just sat there. People kept passing me by, not realizing I was paralyzed by fear.

Feeling dizzy and sick, it was hard to breathe. An older main coon jumped on the bench and sat next to me. He looked slightly older than Weedette. I sat with him on the bench for the rest of the afternoon and just petted him. I was a deeply confused woman with only a cat to provide her company.

When the sun began to set, a man asked if we could move and take a seat on the bench. He made me nervous, but I was civilized after all and made the space for him to sit next to us. The cat jumped on his lap and began purring ferociously.

“You do not know how you got here,” he said. “Most of us do know, either. And the remaining people pretend that they do know.”

His words had made no sense to me, and at the same time, they did.”

He smiled, while I just sat there immobilized by a new wave of mini-panic attacks. I let the silence keep us connected. I did not want him there, but I did not wish to be alone with all the chaotic thoughts racing through my mind.

“I feel like I’ve just been on an airplane ride, destination: nowhere. And the plane has crashed, and I’ve landed in a field of overgrown wildflowers,” I blurted. 

“Sounds like you’re sorting out through some crazy shit feelings. I feel for you.” 

“Thanks for your empathy,” I answered. 

“I’m supposed to be on location in New Jersey shooting a movie. It’s my first leading role. I’m not sure how I got here, either. But I like it here. I get some free time to watch the clouds drift.

“Being open to new experiences unfolding in our lives is much better than harping on the old ones.”

“Easy for you to say. But I’m clinically terrified. I always feel like something awful is happening around me, but I can't put my finger on what it is.” 

“Sounds like you have a high level of anxiety, Montreal. The best thing you can do for that is to learn to live life in the moment.” 

“I do not know if I can do that!” 

“You need to learn to trust your intuition.” 

“Trust myself? I’ve yet to make one life decision that has worked out in my favour.” 

He had laughed before the image of him became blurry and faded away. The last thing I could hear him say in a distorted voice was, “Nothing is permanent, so do not be afraid. As you landed in this place, you will leave it, too.” 

“Yeah, but what is this place?”

Suddenly, I felt hungry. I can’t even remember the last time that I ate.

When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to find myself lying on my living room floor. Weedette was curled up at my legs, licking her front paws. The cat gave me a “what is wrong with you?” face.

Somehow, I managed to get up. Lightheaded, I went to my fridge to grab some orange juice, concluding that my blood sugar must have been low. I felt better as the juice made its way down my throat. 

The rest of the day passed lamely: I spread out on my sofa and read a book on Customer Satisfaction Management. While reading it, I heard a woman crying. I scanned my living room in a daze. I could not tell where the crying was coming from, but Weedette kept snoring, sleeping next to me, unbothered.

Unexpectedly, my stomach started growling at deafening levels, forcing me into the kitchen to heat some leftover vegetarian lasagna to satisfy its discontent. Afterward, I made myself tea and added mineral water with some ginger in the cup. Upon throwing away my tea bag in the recycle bin under my sink, I noticed it was full. It was time to empty it.

When I opened the front door of my apartment, Weedette made a run for it, and I ended up trying to find her. I felt ridiculous walking around, shouting, “Weedie, Weedie, Weedie.” 

I had to find this cat. When I got to the second floor of my eight-story building, I heard a voice come out of apartment 2B.

“The deserter is in here,” he said. 

The voice sounded familiar. It was a voice from my past. Surprisingly, when I entered the foyer of the voice’s apartment, the cat jumped into my arms.

I was stunned to see Fishel Greenspoon standing in front of me. Fishel had changed his name to Riley Rowe before moving to New York and becoming an eclectic novelist. His novels had the style of Aaron Sorkin scripts. Sharp stories, smart characters, and frenetic dialogue. A feast for stimulating the mind.

“Hey, I know you. What are you doing here?” he asked. 

“I live here. What are you doing here? Don’t you live in the Big Apple now?” 

“So, I guess you know what happened to me? What are you up to?” 

“I’m kind of on a break from my career,” I lied. 

“That sounds great. I am kind of on a break, too. I’m starting a new writing project, and I am also in town to support my brother. He’s going through a divorce, and my mom is driving him crazy. She’s constantly cyin’ and whinin’ that he was her last chance to have grandchildren. My relationships never last, so she has given up hope for me to settle down.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear about Max’s troubles,” I said. 

Fishel was my only friend in high school. He is gay, and I am a tad eccentric, so we did not fit in those days. On Saturday nights, we used to hang out at my house. While listening to music, he’d write, and I’d read. We were both quite tame. On graduation night, neither of us had a date, so we went to New York City instead for the weekend and toured all the museums and galleries. It was our first unchaperoned trip. Afterward, we went to different Universities (in different cities) and lost touch. 

“I’m so, so sorry . . . I did not keep in touch with you. Life just kept getting in the way of life,” he said. 

“I’m sorry, too.” 

“I just had a thought. If you’re free, we could hang out tomorrow. And check out our old favourite hanging spots.” 

“Yes, I would love that. Anyway, I'd better go and get this creature fed.” 

“Good-bye, then,” he answered. “I look forward to catching up.”

‘Me too,” I said and smiled. “I will knock at your door tomorrow morning at nine.”

As I headed out of his TempRental, I realized I could do the night shift tomorrow. How surreal, I thought, that Weedette had led me to apartment 2B, where my high school best friend was staying.    

As soon as I entered my apartment, I refilled her bowl and laid the Weedette in front of it. It was her cue to drink. I was worried that she would get dehydrated. The moment the cat complied, and her tongue hit the surface of the water, I went to call my mother. It had been a while since I had spoken to her. And I had to tell her the exciting news about Fishel being in town.

Without even dialling, I heard my mother’s voice fill the room. “Hello, honey, I’m spending the day with you again.” 

“Where are you, Mom?” I asked with the phone’s handle still in my hands.  

Unexpectedly, I soon heard my grandmother’s voice following the sounds of a door screeching open. Immediately, I turned around to see if someone had opened my front door. They had not.

“Ella, you look so tired. Go have some lunch and a strong coffee,” my nana ordered my mom. 

“I’ve been reading her the latest Haruki Murakami book. You know how much she loves this author. Will you read the book to her? The doctors keep telling me that she can hear us despite her state. We need to provide her reassurance if she’s scared in there. Who knows what she thinks is happening to her? I worry . . .” 

“Don’t worry, Mom,” I said, feeling bad. “It’s hard to believe, but Fishel is only six floors down from me now. He is working on his new novel. I find having an old friend close by so comforting.”

My mom did not answer me back. Why didn't she answer me? I must have been hallucinating. I looked around me frantically. I was going crazy. I clearly heard that my grandmother was reading to me … and that was impossible. Or was it? 

“Stop reading, nana! You’re not real. Your voice is only an echo of my unravelling mind.”

She did not stop reading. Fear began infusing my body from head to toe. Becoming dizzy and nauseous, I somehow managed to sit down. Suffering in any shape or form has never been my cup of tea. So, I curled up on my sofa with very little strength left in my body and mind. I hugged myself for comfort. I could not bear my new agonizing and painful reality.

Then, suddenly, a beam of sun swept its way into my living room. But, surprisingly, nanoseconds later, hail started harshly hitting every inch of my balcony.