What The Cat Saw- Part 1

A Horrid Halloween Story.

Before I get down into telling a truly ghastly tale of urban living and phantasmagorical chills, I want to show off some special art I created that will be given away to special friends, family and paid subscribers.

Limited Edition Collectible Cards: Zeke as a Classic Movie Monster

Exclusive to paid subscribers of my Substack, this limited edition of collectible cards features three different vibrant 6"x6" prints of acrylic paintings of my dog, Zeke, my Jack Russell-Chihuahua, re-imagined as a classic movie monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Mummy. The original paintings are rich, atmospheric 8"x8" portraits, crafted to capture both the intensity of these iconic characters from old movie posters and the playful spirit of Zeke. Each card comes with a fun description on its reverse side. All will are signed and numbered to make unique collectibles for art lovers, horror fans, and loyal Zeke followers. These cards are not available anywhere else. This my gift well be sent to all you faithful supporters of my art as soon as it returns from the printer. Huzzah!

Zeke-ho-tep, The Pharaoh’s Dog

Frankenstein’s Monster’s Dog

Count Zekecula

But fear not, dear free subscriber, I didn’t forget about you. I’ll also be making this art available as t-shirts, mugs and canvas wall art. Links to these items will be in on my swag page and listed on my website tomorrow.

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Now onto the first part of a truly horrible tale.

What the Cat Saw - Part 1

Around April of the year 2000, my girlfriend and I moved into a two-bedroom duplex apartment that was the first floor of a brownstone building in Jersey City, New Jersey. The place that offered all the amenities we were hoping for: a convenient walk to nearby restaurants and shops; and a quick commute to our jobs across the Hudson River in New York City; and, most importantly, a very affordable rent.

Our new landlord seemed to be rather uptight when we first inspected this apartment, but his eagerness to rent the place at such a low rent, swayed us to overlook any of his behavioral faults.

Everything was fairly standard in the rental conditions, but one thing he insisted upon on was his “No Cats” policy. We assured him that wouldn’t be a problem as we signed the lease.

However, my girlfriend, Deb, informed me after we left the landlord, that the two cats she had at her father’s home were in fact hers, and that they’d also be MY new roommates.

Not wanting to spoil what was a hot and heavy relationship with a woman who melted my heart whenever she was near, I became a willing accomplice in her cat smuggling deception. I considered, much like every other landlord in the tri-state area, that unless you miss the rent, this guy would mostly be an absentee landlord.

We moved in without issue and set up our little love nest. Deb brought her cats to their new home. While their names were Spirit and Shadow, we mostly just called the cats "Boy" and "Girl." Shadow was a small black female Siamese mix and Spirit was a medium size grey male Siamese mix. The two seemed to adjust well to their new digs, despite being confined away from the windows like feline Anne Franks.

After a couple of weeks, we started to observe that Spirit would sit in the hallway and gazing upwards at nothing for extended periods of time. Occasionally, we’d also see him meowing out a conversation with this imaginary friend.

Deb chalked it up to the usual weird behavior of cats. Personally, I found it unnerving, but not as disturbing as what both Deb and I next encountered.

One night I had a dream where an indistinct man and woman were standing at the foot of our bed, watching us. The dream was so unsettling that it woke me up, and in that hazy transition from REM sleep to full wakefulness, I thought I saw two shadowy figures disappearing before my eyes!

The following morning, I shared my nightmare with Deb, and her eyes widened as she revealed that she also dreamt of being watched.

We chalked it up to the stupid cats crawling into bed with us in the middle of the night, and thought nothing more about the nonsense of shadowy figures.

That is, we never thought about it again until some months later, one rainy night when Deb took a local taxi home from the metro station.

As the taxi pulled up in front of our place, the cabbie said, in that boisterous voice that New Jersey cabbies tend to have, “Holy Jesus! You’se live in the MURDER building!”

Deb’s jaw dropped at the comment and she asked the Cabbie what he was talking about.

The cabbie went on, “Oh yaz, sure enough dat’s da place! You never heard? There was a dead body of some cop! His wife was collecting his pension money while his dead corpse was stored in a box in the basement and stinking up the whole building! Da wife kept sprinklin’ soap flakes on him to keep down the stench, but it wasn’t working, so eventually she drug his body over to the vacant lot next door and then she went vamoose! Da cops eventually caught her, but she kilt herself!”

Deb was considerably freaked out after hearing the story, she gave the cabbie a good tip for taking time to tell her about our “Murder” building. Afterwards, she rushed into the entrance of the building and burst through our apartment door to tell me the news.

“WE LIVE IN A MURDER BUILDING! A MURDER BUILDING! WE GOT GHOSTS! THE CAT’S TALKING TO GHOSTS!!!”

I too got freaked out by the news, although it also solved something I was curious about before moving into this place.

For you see I was living two blocks down the street for about two years before our move.

When walking home from the metro one day in 1999, and from down the street, I saw half a dozen police cars in front of that building. I thought nothing of it at the time since this part of Jersey City was heavily crime ridden.

“Huh, so that’s what all those cops cars were doing…” I unconsciously said out loud.

“WHAT?” Deb noted then chided, “You saw the whole thing from your place down the street and YOU DIDN’T THINK TO TELL ME BEFORE WE MOVED IN?”

I squirmed, “uh…I…didn’t realize…and…uh…forgot?”

“OH GOD! Yet another thing about this damn place!” Deb raged.

I calmed Deb down a little as we considered our ghostly problem, which by that time seemed almost a whimsical in comparison to the other issues with this apartment.

In the few short months after moving in we were ambushed by a variety of problems.

First, our upstairs neighbors were a pack of self-absorbed LSD and Ketamine munching lunatics who played loud bass heavy club music until 4am every night!

When I kindly to asked them to turn down the music, they then started dropping bowling balls on the floor all night long. Also, since the apartments all had stairwell connected back decks, these lunatics would build bonfires on the concrete floor of their deck once a weeknight, along with blowing fireballs from the porch and towards the trees in the back yard.

Neighbors would call the fire department on them, but every time the fire crew showed up and knocked on their door, the drugheads were too loaded or deaf to answer the door.

Of course, by then I was more than happy to help the fire department enter through our apartment and walk up to their deck. Oh, there was sweet, short-lived revenge that night when they all were slapped with a hefty fine. Unfortunately for us, after this they just went back to their noise making with even more verve.

And when these jackasses weren’t keeping us up at night, the duty was taken over by the crack whore who rented one of the other apartments in the murder building. She’d roll in around 3am every night and spend a solid thirty minutes loudly clearing her throat out on the sidewalk — outside our bedroom window! What exactly got her so phlegmy was something I didn’t want to know nor cared to ask about. Ewww.

But the fun didn’t stop there.

A few months later we learned about another thing the landlord failed mention at the lease signing. There was a not-so-slight problem with the plumbing in our below street level, downstairs bathroom and kitchen.

Whenever there was a major rain storm, brown and black sewage would back up through the pipes and spray out of the kitchen sink and toilet and flood our downstairs with muck!

When I called the landlord up to finally complain about our shit covered, phlegm stained, loud idiot pestered abode, Mr. Joe Absentee decided to do an unannounced pop-in to our apartment while we weren’t there.

As he opened the door to the apartment, our cats, in true cat fashion, promptly greeted him with a volley of cat gut-pumping puke.

Shortly after his visit, I received a snide call from him where he complained about our having cats in the apartment.

I was first taken aback by the sheer temerity of this creep to declare that our cats were such a huge threat to his precious little building. I tried pointing out that a pile of cat puke pales in comparison to the Charles Manson cult upstairs, the crack whore spatted facade, the sewage spraying toilet kitchen combo, or THE GOD DAMN MURDERS HE NEVER REVEALED!

The call ended on less than friendly terms, and regardless of the fact that we were the “good” tenants, he requested that we leave the apartment at the end of our year’s lease.

Fast forward another month or so, the horror of the World Trade Center attack took place. Jersey City had a front row seat across the river to this disaster and we were getting dusted every night with the toxic deadly smoke from that burning pile of debris. More horror on top of horror.

As September closed, Deb and I packed up the cats and moved 10 miles away to Montclair, NJ to a house with decent neighbors, a great landlord, and NO DAMN GHOSTS!

I wonder if our boy cat ever missed chatting with his invisible friend?

Never Trust a Cabbie for Details

Being a stickler for historical accuracy and since it’s been 20 plus years since I’ve thought about this nightmare, I decided to look up what history there was about our Murder Building and the reported death. The details I found were far different, and far worse, than what the cabbie reported to Deb.

That part of this grisly tale will be coming to you in a few days in Part Two of “What The Cat Saw.”

Happy Halloween!

Ed