COT - Neighborhood Nightlife: Episode 7

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It's been a while since I've had a chance to visit my Cat on Tuesday friends. I've missed everyone, but I've been working hard at restoring some simblance of organization and routine around me. I've tried to pick up where I left off, so here's Episode 7 about Necco the apartment cat.

Neighborhood Nightlife is the continuing ruminations of Necco, an apartment cat whose only contact with the feline race is through the open windows at midnight, while her guardians sleep.

All New Neighbors

January had been the coldest month on record. For that reason all of the windows in Necco's apartment had been shut tight, day and night, and all Necco could do was sit faithfully on the windowsills and watch life go on around her like a silent movie. In the daytime hungry birds flocked to the bird feeder that hung from the tree in front of the apartment, their chirps and squawks muffled by the double-pained, insulated glass.

Even on really cold nights, Necco was used to having the bedroom window open at least a half and inch, but this year was the worst, and for nearly a month the window had been securely shut. Necco couldn't communicate with Markus above her, Frog on her left or even Thorny who often crawled under arborvitae hedgerow to visit the apartment cats at the Rainbow Estates Senior Village, each midnight.

The first half of February brought no promise of the windows being opened a crack either. The odds were that even if Necco's windows on the lower level were opened, it didn't necessarily mean that the windows in the other two units were open, too. So there was still no one to talk to. Necco felt isolated and alone.

With a depressing drop in her energy level, Necco took to hibernating between a pile of pillows on her guardian's bed during the short dark and dreary days, and then pacing from the front windows to back windows during the long restless nights. It wasn't until close to the beginning of March when suddenly things outside her window began to change. The first weekend in March, the weather had warmed enough for her treasured humans to start leaving the bedroom window open three or four inches at night, giving Necco a chance to breathe some fresh air and to visit with Markus, Frog, and Thorny. Oh, how she longed for a visit with her friends—how she pined for warm summer breezes and long, delightful nights talking and laughing with her friends through the wide open windows. Those days, however, were still months away.

When her outside world was muffled behind glass, Necco dutifully waited on her windowsill at midnight, watching for Thorny to make his rounds, longing to talk with him. But even then she didn't see much of him strutting through the grounds. She imagined that if it had been too cold for her humans to crack a window, then it had to be too cold for even a seasoned inside-outside cat, like Thorny.

At midnight of the first night her windows had been cracked open a few inches, Necco's excitement could barely be contained. She leapt upon the windowsill and waited for the familiar sound of Markus above her, scrabbling up to his windowsill. He was generally the first one she ever talked with at night, then Frog would hear them talking and chime in with his news. Soon after the three were gathered and happily chatting away, Thorny would show up and share the news he'd gathered from the rest of the apartment cats scattered throughout the village.

Unable to wait any longer for Markus and Frog to come to their windows, or Thorny to come strutting across the parking lot, Necco filled the still, night air with her sweet voice. An invitational song drifting out on the cool currents of midnight, summoning her friends to join her for a bit of gossip. When she had finished her mewling, she listened intently for the familiar sounds from her friends gathering near. But no one came. For an hour Necco sat cat-loafed on the windowsill, her nose pressed against the cold wire mesh of the window screen, mewling now and then, but no one responded to her pleas. Disappointed that Markus and Frog never answered her call, she finally realized it could be that their humans had not opened their windows yet.

Necco was about to give up and slither under the covers between her soundly sleeping humans when she caught sight of Thorny coming through the arborvitae at the edge of the parking lot. Her ears picked up, her tail whapped the window pane with hard, loud thumps, while she pawed at the glass trying desperately to get Thorny's attention. She wanted to let him know that her window was at last open a bit and she was ready for conversation. It took another loud mew from Necco before Thorny looked in her direction and dutifully trotted over to her.

"Hi, ya, Necco," Thorny greeted her cheerfully as he hopped upon the nearest car. "Not too bad out tonight. I see your humans have finally opened your window."

Necco was so ecstatic to hear another feline voice that she nearly slid off her windowsill. "Thorny, finally, someone to talk to. What's been going on? Can you see Markus or Frog's windows? Are they open? I've been calling and calling but no one has answered."

Thorny glanced up at the empty window above Necco apartment. "Didn't you know?" he said.

"Know what, Thorny? What's happened? Where's Markus?" Necco began to fret that something bad had happened to her longtime, nighttime-window friend. The apartments they lived in where virtually soundproof from all the other apartment noises when the windows were closed.

"Markus and his humans moved out a week ago. There's no body living up there anymore," Thorny said.

Panic struck Necco's heart, "Markus…is…gone? A…a…week ago?" She hadn't known. The news was almost too much to bear. "G-gone?" she stuttered.

"Yes," Thorny related a bit too casually, like it wasn't any big deal to lose a friend overnight. To Thorny, people and their cats and dogs, birds, hamster, and what have you, were always coming and going from the apartment complexes he visited. "Frog's gone, too," he said, without emotion. He left a few days before Markus. Yesterday a little white curly-haired pooch, no bigger than a peanut, moved into Frog's old place."

"A dog? In Frog's apartment? Oh, my," Necco was about to hyperventilate.

Necco wanted to cry. In one fell swoop, she had lost two dear friends and had not even known about it. She'd not had the chance to say good-bye or even wish them happiness in their new home. And now, Thorny, whom she practically adored, sat licking his paws and washing his face on the frost covered hood of a car. Thorny, mister-come-and-go-as-you-please-tom, suddenly seemed to have as cold of a heart as the car he sat upon. Tears fled from Necco's eyes faster than she could swipe them away with her paw. But Thorny wasn't to blame. If the windows had been opened in the nighttime the way they'd always been, then she would have had her chance to know they were leaving. Not that knowing would make her less sad. But still she would have known. She would have said good-bye.

"Who lives up there now," Necco managed to choke out. "Who replaced Markus? Do you know? Did you see them yet?"

Thorny looked up at the pitch-black window above Necco. The one thing he did know about these apartments was that when one was vacant the window blinds were pulled up tight—shouting out to everyone passing by the stark emptiness of it. Then he glanced over at the apartment where Frog had lived. "Here's how it looks to me, Sis," he sighed with the unhappy news. "No one lives above you now, but there will be someone soon, I'm sure. These places are never empty for more than a week or two at best. I've told you about the older lady with a tiny white dog that moved into Frog's place. I've only seen her once or twice. Seems they must still be moving things in for her—I think they call the peanut mutt, Charlie or something like that. It's really the ugliest little thing I've seen."

Thorny didn't know how to tell her the rest of the news; one of the top reasons he doesn't come to this side of the complex much anymore. "I hate to have to tell you, girl. You're surrounded by woofies now (Thorny's term for dogs). On the other side of your porch you have two new neighbors, too. Upstairs, Prissy Girl has moved and been replaced by a small brown dog named Misty. Down below—directly across from your front door, a lady moved in with a big, wolf-like dog. I've heard her call the woofie Ralph. More dogs, Necco. In just a few weeks, all of your neighbors have gone to the dogs."

Necco's eyes focused on the window of the first apartment nearest the entrance to the complex. Sissy, a long, white-haired Persian, who used to be a show cat named Princess Pricilla Prudence, otherwise known as Sissy, was sitting in her window waiting for Thorny's nightly visit. It seemed her window was open a crack, too. Necco had once thought of Sissy as stuck up, until she learned that the poor old dear was nearly blind. Since Sissy's apartment was too far away to converse with like she, Markus, and Frog, often did, she'd have to wait for warmer weather and a chance to at least say hello, in passing, as Sissy's owner walked her by the window on a purple leash.

Woofies. No cat wants to hear that she's surrounded by woofies. Not only do they smell bad, but they're loud. "Oh," Necco sighed in despair, "What has happened to my neighborhood? Will someone move in above me with a cat?"

Then Necco wondered about the aliens that had moved in upstairs over Frog a while back, the two cats with the extra toes, Miss Polly Dactyl and Miss Paddle Foot. Would they ever be friends now? They had never joined in on any of the midnight conversations that Necco had with the others. When she called out to them before the frigid weather moved in and isolated everyone, they never answered. Thorny mentioned then that he'd seen them in their windows during the day, but never at night.

Necco's little heart ached. Thorny seemed eager to leave and go visit Sissy, she could swear he had a crush on that white ball of fluff. Necco said good-bye to Thorny, leapt from the window and landed with pinpoint precision in the middle of the bed of her sleeping humans, wormed her way between them under the covers, and silently cried herself to sleep. She would miss her friends, deeply.