I once killed my neighbour’s cat. Well that’s not completely true and before you go calling PETA or the RSPCA, hear me out. It wasn’t exactly I that did the deed, but I guess you could class me as an accomplice.
The first house I rented after moving out of home was an old house that had been divided into two flats. My neighbour was this eccentric old man who had a habit of hoarding. I once got a glimpse of inside his flat from the front door. His walls were lined with cardboard boxes, it was pretty much a fire hazard in the making. One match and the whole place would have went up in flames like Mel Gibson’s career. In regards to my neighbour, he was pretty low maintenance except for one thing… his cat.
I’ve always had an appreciation for cats. I think it’s the fact that they’re such independent creatures with a mind of their own. They either like you or they don’t, and nothing you can do will change their mind. My neighbour’s cat was a brownish striped tabby called Robert, and no matter what I did he never seemed to like me. He would often show his distaste for my existence whenever he would see me by attempting to turn my leg into a scratching post for no apparent reason. It goes without saying Robert had extremely sharp claws.
There were times that I tried to provide the “olive branch of peace” in the form of bowls of milk and leftovers. He would be civil but usually only for a very brief time. On a regular basis he’d lay on the footpath that led from my front door and I would be forced to walk around him. Often this meant walking off the footpath because he would give a warning hiss and if I got to0 close he’d charge at me with claws ready for the attack. In the end I learnt to accept the fact that Robert was and always would be a shit head and nothing I could do was ever going to change that.
One fateful Sunday afternoon, a mate and I had smoked a few cones and discovered that we were suffering a bad case of the munchies. We decided a quick drive down to the supermarket would cure that. We climbed into his ute. My mate turned on the engine and “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by Eiffel 65 came on the radio. In our stoner states we couldn’t help but join in for a sing-a-long. My mate hit reverse and the ute jolted upwards as if we had just ran over a speed bump. For a brief moment, the two of us stared at each other shocked. I had a flat driveway. Straight away I knew something terrible had happened. My mate turned the engine off and we both stepped out and inspected underneath the ute. To my horror there lay Robert in a motionless lump of brown fur.
After briefly arguing in our stoner states as to who was to blame. Obviously it was my mate, it was his ute and he was in the driver’s seat. We discussed what was going to be the next course of action. At first I thought we should go straight to my neighbour and explained what happened. But the paranoia had sunken in. He’d know that we were stoned off our faces. Would he call the cops? I was 18, way too young to go to jail and be forced to drop soap. I had the thought of putting Robert on the side of the road and pretending it was a hit and run. But what happened if someone saw us? Every worst possible outcome was racing through my mind all at once. Suddenly my mate picked up Robert, glanced around and ran over to my neighbour’s red commodore placing him underneath the back tyre.
His reasoning? Why take the blame when someone else can. We were young after all. Afterwards we decided it was best to completely remove ourselves from the scene of the crime, we grabbed the last of the weed, dropped by the supermarkets to ease the munchies and I spent the night at my mate’s place smoking the paranoia away. A couple of days later I bumped into my neighbour who proceeded to tell me of Robert’s fate, how he must have climbed underneath the car to find shade from the sun and was accidentally run over. To this day my neighbour probably still thinks he killed his own cat.
– Special K
Rehab For The Fabulous: The rants of a somewhat fictional character.
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