Missing Cat

His name is James… Was James, God rest his soul. He was seriously the best cat I’ve ever had. From the day I got him and brought him home he didn’t act like other cats and I know because I’ve had other cats before. Quite a few, as a matter of fact, but they’ve all died and gone to be with St. Peter. So I just have James now, and boy is he strange. James pretty much acts like a dog. He walks around with his tongue hanging out and practically barks at the neighbors. He flat-out refuses to use his litter box. Like sometimes I’ll catch him ‘going’ on my clothes or hiding his mess under the rug, but the thing is he just prefers to do his business outside. I know you won’t believe this, but he likes me to leash him and walk him around the neighborhood. I would have turned him into an outside cat, but you know how it is in the city—cats get hit by cars all the time and they don’t have nine lives.

So I get stuck with this cat who has to be walked every day twice a day which has been an adjustment because, as you can probably tell, I’m no spring chicken. My doctor told me to be more active so it’s probably a good thing, but even if I had wanted to walk an animal every morning and afternoon, I would have actually gotten a dog, you know what I’m saying? It’s just embarrassing because it’s not normal for an old guy to be walking around with a cat on the end of a string. And he likes to piss like a dog—if you have a dog, you know exactly what I’m talking about: sniffs around, lifts the leg, shoots the stream directly sideways. And it’s on absolutely everything: fire hydrants, tall blades of grass, someone’s homework, whatever. Some guy cussed me out at the park the other day because James ruined his soy milk five expresso shot cafe latte or whatever the hell he was drinking. He said it cost him ten dollars. I told the guy James had a problem but he acted like I’m the one who took a leak on his drink. And who spends ten dollars on coffee anyway?

I would put a stop to it, but even though he acts like a dog, he’s still cat minded and you know how cats get offended by any little thing you tell them off for. They’re just so sensitive. Well I’ve tried to stop him from urinating on things before but he will completely shut down and act like he has no reason to live anymore. I pulled him away from relieving himself on a boy’s leg once and James was so upset he didn’t eat or drink a single thing for an entire week. I thought he was going to die from starvation. So I found the boy at the park and told him I’d give him fifty dollars if he would come over and pet my cat.

“Excuse me, can you please just stick to the question, sir?”

Oh, sorry, officer. What was the question again?

“Can you please describe the cat?”

Oh, sure. Jeremy is fat with a short tail and has long black and brown fur.

“I thought his name was James.”

His name is James.

“Well you just called him Jeremy.”

James is short for Jeremy. When I got him, I named him Jeremy and it stayed that way for a bit, but then my next door neighbor, Jennifer moved out and a gay man by the name of Jeremy moved in. A couple times he came to my door because he thought I was calling for him. So I started calling him James, but he answers to both.

“Jeremy answers to both?”

No, James does.

"Ok, can you please explain why you suspect the cat was stolen?”

Sure, last Sunday when I was walking Jeremy, we came across a little black notebook on the ground. He was going to, you know, pee on it like pretty much everything we come across. Well I hardly ever do this, but it looked kind of important so I grabbed it out from under him and opened it up to see if someone’s name was written inside. It was one of those mole-skinned notebooks and it was completely blank except for a phone number and a reward amount: twenty thousand dollars. When I looked down again James was staring down at the spot where the notebook had been. I tried to quickly hide the notebook behind my back but he saw it and glared at me angrily. Sometimes if I upset James he won’t talk to me for a week. One time I bought him the wrong flavor of dog food and he went and hid under my bed until I returned it and got him the correct flavor and I had to feed it to him a spoonful at a time because he refused to feed himself.

If I keep him from peeing on anything he will completely stop talking to me.

“You just said that.”

There have been times he won’t eat for a week and I get scared he’s going to die. Well, poor Jamesy, when I got him home he was absolutely distraught. I knew he was eyeing that notebook just waiting to urinate all over it. I also knew his bladder wasn’t completely empty and I didn’t know exactly how long he could hold it, but he wasn’t going to piddle ever again until he could pee directly on that notebook. It was like it was his own special version of cat litter— his only toilet. I had to protect it somehow, so I put it in the safe. I don’t think he knows the code, but just to be sure, I changed it. You can’t be too careful, right? Then I tried to call the number from the notebook, but I got an answering machine so I left her a message.

“Her? It was a woman?”

Yes.

“What did she sound like?’

Hot. She sounded middle aged. Very commanding. A bit stilted. Almost like she really wanted you to understand her.

“What did she say her name was?”

She didn’t say. She just said “Please leave a message for” and then she slowly repeated her phone number. I”m very good at judging a woman by her voice. She’s definitely tall.

“Ok, that sounds like an automated voicemail.”

What’s ‘automated?’

“It’s like a robot.”

Oh, you think the lady is a robot?

“No I think the lady isn’t a lady at all.”

Well, you’re right because it wasn’t a lady. The person that called back was a man who wanted me to meet him with the notebook at a coffee shop not far from where I live. The next morning I left James in his sad pee purgatory and walked down the street to the coffee shop to meet this guy and it just turned out to be Jeremy with a twenty thousand dollar check which he traded for the empty notebook and I walked home alone feeling a little empty. And when I got back to the apartment, James was gone.

“That still doesn’t explain why you think the cat was stolen. The only reason I go anywhere for a missing cat is if there is reason to believe there was foul play.”

Don’t you see? It was Jeremy. Someone would only pay twenty thousand dollars for an empty notebook if they wanted you to believe the notebook was worth something in order to throw you off their ulterior motive which is to get rid of my cat. It also had to be Jeremy because he’d want to keep his money close to keep an eye on it so he can steal it back when he needs it. Also, Jeremy is the only one who would know when I left the apartment so he could take my cat while I went to give him his notebook.

“Yes but don’t forget he has an alibi. You yourself saw him at the shop and even took the check from his hands.”

He did it somehow, I know it. Please do something. My best friend James is gone and I can’t live without him.

“Yes, but think of all the friendships you can buy with twenty thousand dollars. In the meantime why don’t you try printing some flyers. The best I can do is write this all down in my handy dandy small black notebook. Will you be offering a reward?”

Yes. Twenty thousand dollars.

“Ok, well thanks for the information and we’ll try to help get the word out there for you. Hopefully you’ll hear back from someone soon. I will say, it’s not every day that a man stops a cat from peeing on a twenty thousand dollar notebook.”

______________

Unfortunately the officer dropped his notebook in the alleyway. Two days later as fate would have it, the officer’s notebook stops a man from peeing on a twenty thousand dollar cat, while in a not so distant alternate reality, a cat stops a notebook from peeing on a twenty thousand dollar man.