Cats and Pigs

The worst part about working for the city is that I know exactly where taxpayer money is going. Ticketing Doordashers while they’re inside a chain Chinese place waiting for the egg rolls some college student ordered to come up. Following 20-somethings into a garage at night to let them know they’ve got a running light out. Asking drifters if they’re planning on sleeping under the bridge again or if they’ve scrounged up $1,200 for an apartment deposit since last night. It turns you into your dad in the most insidious way. 

That’s all I’m thinking as I’m banging down a stranger’s door for the third time this week to shine a flashlight in a disconcerted woman’s face. 

“Sorry, uh,” I begin like always, practiced embarrassment halting my words and furrowing my brow at the same points as last time. 

Just doing my job, says my grimace. I’m a cool guy off the clock, promise. 

A cool, smart guy, says the Foosball Champ keychain on my belt loop and the class ring I unearthed from the bottom of a pitcher of beer in May of ‘84 on my finger, respectively. 

I’m going to ruin your fucking evening, says my badge. But I won’t feel good about it, says the months of grime and fingerprints tarnishing it. 

“I got a call about noise,” says I, out loud, with my mouth and teeth and tongue. 

“Noise. What noise? It’s just me,” scoffs the woman through the space between the door hinge and the chain lock. Probably a woman, anyway. That’s a deduction on my part, what with only seeing a quarter of her face. That’s just the kind of sharp detective work that makes me such a crack-on beat cop. 

“A neighbor reported a disturbance on account of animals. Barking or yowling, I guess. You got any pets in there?” says I, and this time I look up and smile sheepishly. I’m sure we’re both aware there’s not a peep coming from this poor woman’s home. 

“It’s just me,” the woman repeats, and then a cat slinks around the side of the door to rub its face on her leg. 

My smile gets a mite more strained. 

She shoos the cat back with one slippered heel, whispering, “Oh, Brandy…”

“Ma’am, I’m not your landlord. I’m city police. I don’t give a shit if you’re not paying your pet rent. We have to follow up on all the complaints we get, just in case, you know. So how about you just let me know how many pets you’ve got, and I’ll jot down that you’ll try to keep them quiet after dark, and I’ll let you get back to your evening.”

“How many cats can I have?” 

This is the first question to actually disrupt my routine. “I ain’t animal control either. You can have all the pets that you wanna take care of.”

She looks dubious. “They aren’t pets. I run a cat shelter. How many can I have then?” 

Gumshoe I am, I wonder if maybe this broad might be lying to me. That’s really not my business, though.

“Alright,” I acknowledge, pretending as though I am not standing outside a studio apartment in a residential neighborhood. If my suspicions don’t get raised, there’s nothing to make a note of. What they don’t tell you about suspicions is that they take an awful lot of documentation, and paperwork gets a guy home too late for Gunsmoke reruns. I’m almost to the episode where Matt Dillon gets amnesia. “If you can just give me a number, I can be on my way.” 

What I’m trying to do must not be working, because she hasn’t relaxed. In fact, she looks like she’s trying to remember how to do trigonometry. 

After solving for cosine: “Am I under arrest?” 

“What?” 

“What are you charging me with?”  she demands coldly. The cat at her feet steps halfway outside to nuzzle my work boot warmly. I’m left at a net-zero temperature change.

“I ain’t—” I try to keep from raising my voice, but she won’t give me the chance to demonstrate my magnanimity and patience. 

“Come back with a warrant, then.” She draws the door back just enough to get started with a real good slam, and there’s a sound I can’t describe.

We both look down with the reluctance of someone who’s just stepped in something that feels like gum, or run over something that made the thunk of a body. 

Brandy the cat lays prone, making a sound I more closely associate with teens complaining.

That’s when the yowling starts. It’s one or two voices at first, and then it’s an orchestra I’d have never bought tickets to. 

I’m reminded of a childhood trip to a condemned house, a daring bout of trespassing fueled by folly of youth. The place had been through the life cycle of eviction, squatting, repossession, and then abandonment, after which it became home once again to droves of hornets. Brimming with adrenaline, it took me time to realize it wasn’t me who was vibrating, but the house itself. 

Now, the floorboards under my feet once again tremble, and my guts tell me, urgently, that the house must be haunted. I watch through the opening in the door as an infestation of cats churns like a troubled ocean, fluffed up and half-feral. 

Brandy has recovered enough to drag herself out of the way of the door, and the woman closes it just long enough to take off the chain lock and fling it open. 

Dozens of cats, indeterminate size and cuteness level. The teeming hivemind stumbles over itself in eagerness to escape. Waiting for the tidal wave to slow to a trickle, I think  of Charlie Chaplain fixed in place as he awaits a barn to crash over his head. Instead of stakes in the toes of my shoes, though, it’s Brandy purring against my ankle that weighs me down. 

“I really did not want my evening to look like this,” I tell the woman, wearing my naked expression for the first time in what feels like months. 

She only looks as gobsmacked as the average empty nester. Less shock, more Sure, I knew they’d leave, but are they not even going to call?

“Brandy seems to like you,” she says, striking a bargain. “Maybe you’d like to adopt her?”

I watch the cat flip over to expose her belly, extending both paws toward me as if begging to be picked up. 

I click my pen and flip to a new page in my notepad. That’d be even more paperwork.