They began tumbling out of windows the Summer I moved in. The first to collide with the planet was Jasper. He was a Calico, I think.
The Cutlass Hotel was built in 1916 and converted into apartments in 1981. In 1990, it was allocated as Section 8 housing. This is why I took up residence—it was the only place I could afford.
I remember walking out the back entrance of the building towards the front. I don’t recall where I was going or why I didn’t leave from the main entrance—I must have been trying to avoid one of the many deranged tenants I lived amongst. Stationed on the sidewalk, a young guy, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, had his hands resting on his head as it bobbed up and down from the heavens to the ground.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! It just fell.”
He was all I saw. I began to grow anxious, knowing a few young kids lived on the upper floors of the Cutlass. But then the eyewitness moved toward the building, leaning on it to unburden his anguish. I was now able to see what all the hoopla was about. My anxiety dissipated when I saw a cat splayed across the sidewalk.
“I think I know that cat,” I said. “His name’s Jasper.”
“I was walking, and he fell right in front of me. Oh, God!”
Jasper lay on the pavement, gasping. I was surprised that there was no blood. Just a tiny fur ball gasping and gasping.
“Does the owner know?”
“Yes, I told them! They’re getting their car.”
I assumed this guy had lived a precious existence up until this moment. I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders. There was nothing for me to do, so I moved on.
Jasper’s descent prompted screens to be installed in all the windows from the second floor up. This may have saved some pets, but not all.
Three weeks later, I became acquainted with Sunshine, an orange tabby. Again, I was on my usual path attempting to avoid any contact with neighbors. Walking toward the main boulevard, where the Cutlass sat, I felt something whoosh past the back of my head. My arms shot up to provide protection. I thought someone was taking a swing at me.
I quickened my pace. After making some ground, I turned to look. No one was there. But once again, the sidewalk was decorated with fur. I looked up and saw a screen dangling from a window on the fourth floor.
“See what you made me do! See!” a man said from inside.
I could hear the loud sobs of a woman. It turned out to be a domestic quarrel. The scorned lover who pitched Sunshine out the window was arrested. The walls of the Cutlass now contained one less lunatic.
The next dead felines I encountered didn’t descend from the heavens—instead, they were underground. To exit the building from the back, one has to do so from the basement. The laundry room, recycling room, and several domestic units are contained there. Due to the lack of light, the odd and mysterious sounds emanating from the apartments, and the fact that none of the tenants seemed to leave the apartments, the basement had all the qualities of a dungeon.
It was now July. I descended the stairs expecting to see the usual dingy, unoccupied space. But when I exited the stairwell, I was sucked up into a commotion that spilled out from an apartment across the way.
Movers whisked away boxes and furniture. Shirt collars stretched over noses and mouths to escape the foul odor in the air.
“Wanna see something?”
I turned to find Jerry, the property manager, standing beside me. He held open a large garbage bag. Like an idiot, I peeked inside. A whiff of decay and rot hit me in the face as my peepers took in several black and gray fuzzballs. I had a strong urge to both punch and puke on Jerry.
“They were Mrs. Alverson’s. Now, they’ll join her in the great big litter box in the sky. Did you know her?”
I shook my head.
“Well, you didn’t miss much.”
That same day, I witnessed a cat get hit by a car as it chased a rat in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. But this is a domestic yarn, not a neighborhood saga.
The last cat I saw Fall from the skies wasn’t real, but I couldn’t tell the difference. One night, I dreamed I was standing outside of the building. My arms were outstretched. I was looking up at the top of the Cutlass, where a tiny kitten stood on the edge of the roof. I could barely see it. I told the kitten to jump and not to worry—I would catch him.
The kitten leaped into the air. He was in a floating free fall. Slowly but surely, he made his way down. But he grew larger by twentyfold each time he drifted past a floor. He soon eclipsed the Sun. I wanted to move but couldn’t. I awoke as the whale-sized cat was about to pancake me into the ground.
I sat up in bed, and for some reason, my mind was preoccupied with the joke where a person dreams a hamburger is eating them.
The Summer ended. That Fall, I met a girl. Five days later, she asked me to move in with her. I asked if she owned a cat. She said, “No, but I’m considering getting a bird.” I said, “That’ll work.” And like that, we were roommates. The reasons some couples fast-track their relationships are varied with desperation. In my case, I had grown tired of both sidewalks and skeletons.
