Curiosity Did NOT Kill My Cat (But it did help me meet my neighbors)

This is the story of how curiosity did not kill my cat. But it did help me meet my neighbors.

Two weeks ago, my cat jumped off the roof of our apartment. I knew she was gone when she didn’t come back inside on Friday night. But I had to wait until sunrise on Saturday morning to see if she was alive or dead.

Needless to say, that was not a great night for me.

I was alone with the kids that weekend so wasn’t really able to leave the apartment to explore, save for a quick jaunt downstairs to scan for what I’ll just refer to as possible “cat splats” on the sidewalk. Seeing none, I went back to the roof and called her name for another 5 minutes: 

“BAGEL!!!!”

Yes, our cat is named Bagel.

Now read that last sentence again and imagine what you’d think if you saw a woman screaming, “BAGEL!!!” From a rooftop. On the Upper West Side. At midnight.

Yikes…

Anyway.

I should have seen it coming. The jump, that is. Everybody told me not to let my cat roam free on the New York City rooftops. I knew it was a bad idea. My husband knew it was a bad idea. My friend Diane on instagram knew it was a bad idea. (I know you’re going to read this Diane – don’t EVEN start with me about it. I know. I KNOW.)

“Honey,” I had even hedged with my 4-year-old, just weeks earlier, “We need to be really careful when Bagel is out on the roof. You need to know that if she falls off, or she’s pushed off, we aren’t getting her back. Bagel will die.”

She nodded dutifully. 

I know this is making me sound like an incredibly reckless cat parent. And maybe also a fatalistic real life parent. But here’s the thing. I knew Bagel would be down for a semi-regular rooftop wander. You see, Bagel used to be a bodega cat.* 

*Bodega cats are cats that grew up around or generally frequent New York City corner stores, affectionately referred to as “bodegas.” They are beloved by bodega owners for killing mice. They are beloved by humans for being cute while sleeping on a bag of Doritos. If you’re not a cat person, you need to know that bodega cats are VERY RARE and HIGHLY PRIZED. To cat people, that is.. Second only to ocicats in my book. In fact, there are entire instagram feeds dedicated to cats that live in NYC’s famous corner stores.

As a former bodega cat, I knew Bagel had a whole past life as a WORKING CAT in a REAL BODEGA in the BRONX. I knew she had adventure in her bones. I also knew she upped the cool factor in our family by at least 4x. We’d only had her for six months or so, which meant we were all still on our best behavior.

I guess maybe I was feeling a little insecure by my cooler-than-me bodega cat, but I just really just wanted her to like her new life with our family. I didn’t want her to regret giving up her rough-and-tumble, exotic jaunts in the city streets for the domestic day-to-day tedium of a couple of bleary-eyed parents who routinely forget to change her litter box.

So when she first ran out onto the roof and started to explore all of the other roofs up and down W 75th Street, who was I to stop her? 

I first saw her eyeing the jump about a week before she actually went for it.

As someone who changes jobs a lot, I tend to have a pretty good sense by now about whenever someone (human or cat) is about to make a big move. I could tell because she did that thing cats do when they are thinking about jumping, which is crouch down really low, fixate deeply, and then get really, really quiet. (Humans do this too, by the way.)

The first time I saw her do this, I thought maybe she got confused about the depth perception between our balcony and the balcony she had been eyeing. Three floors down. One building over. 

She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Nahhhh.

But she did. And that’s exactly where I found her when the sun came up th next morning. 

Alive. That’s to say, her head and ears twitched when I called her name. 

Then I became the woman screaming “BAGEL!” from the roof at 6am on a Saturday morning. (Slightly less crazy, thanks to the new Kossar’s Bagels that just opened down the block. People probably just thought I was excited to jump the line.)

By that point, I’d assumed that the cat broke all four legs and could no longer stand. I worried about internal bleeding. I worried about head injury. I started to do that math that only pet owners do which is to ask the question, “What is the upper limit of money I am willing to spend to keep this animal ALIVE?"

But the worst part was, I still couldn’t get her back. 

[And HERE’S where we bring things back to building neighborhoods and communities.]

You see, I couldn’t get my cat back because I had NO CLUE who lived on the second floor balcony of the building next door. In fact I didn’t know anyone in the building at all. All I had was a WhatsApp thread of 9 people in my current building. Which I texted, but everyone was still asleep (including my own kids).

It was a conundrum for sure. But just in case you also find yourself in a situation like this, allow me to save you a few steps and cross a few things off the bat for you.

• The Police won’t help.

• The Fire Department won’t help.

• The 24/7 privately staffed emergency security company that monitors apartment buildings will only help actual building residents in actual emergencies (no matter how much I tried to convince them otherwise).

To make a long story long, I’ll just sum up what happened next:

• I tracked down the phone number of the landlord next door through a very stealthy Internet adventure, who (after being very freaked out that I found his phone number) called…

• The people in the unit where the cat was suspected, who hadn’t been answering their buzzer because…

• They had come home from the hospital with a newborn baby the night before and neither parent, nor their two elementary-aged daughters had slept a wink.

So. Now I know five people next door.

Not only that, but in all the panic on my building's WhatsApp thread, one neighbor revealed herself as a childcare specialist who was more than happy to watch my kids, sight unseen, for the entire afternoon. They are now best friends.

All this is thanks to my cat, who miraculously survived the entire ordeal without breaking a single bone.

This, by the way, has caused me a whole other host of problems. Because now I’m stuck living with a cat who DIDN’T DIE from her completely unnecessary thrill-seeking adventure. In fact, she barely skipped a beat. We came home from the animal hospital with a host of pain meds, and she sulked in the closet without even acknowledging a cuddle for three whole days. But on day four, she was right back to her usual antics – trying to sneak past me every time I open the door.

Needless to say I’ve got a lot of explaining to do at home.

On one side, I’ve got an adrenaline junkie cat who keeps smirking at me like: “See. I TOLD you I could do it. TRY ME. Just TRY ME again.”

And on the other side, I’ve got a very confused four-year-old just trying to make sense of the world who keeps asking, “But WHY mommy, WHY? Why didn’t Bagel die like you said she would?”

I don’t know, kid.

This is the story of how curiosity did not kill my cat. But it did help me meet my neighbors.

(And also, probably don’t let your cat roam your rooftop unattended.)

Special thanks to Savannah Kruger and Jon Hillis and the whole Cabin City crew for inspiring me to share this story today. Nothing brings New York neighbors together like a good crisis.