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leave my apartment door open wide in case I need to make a hasty getaway from the racist across the hall. I enter the hallway and knock on her door, calling her name.
    “Mrs. Spearman, it’s Alex … from across the hall.” I hate that the old bird intimidates me. She weighs ninety pounds soaking wet and is old enough to be my great-great-grandmother, but still. The woman is evil, and I don’t mess with evil.
    The knocking and name calling yields no response. I don’t know Mrs. Spearman well, but I do know that if she knew the “mulatto” across the hall was touching her apartment door, she’d yank that door open and curse me into the bowels of hell.
    I knock until my knuckles grow sore. Something’s definitely wrong. The old kook never leaves her apartment until the first of the month, when she gets her check and blows it all at the local bent can store. Other than that, she’s trapped inside the walls of her cat-infested furnace of an apartment. Lord knows old people love cranking the heat on high. I can feel it pouring from the tiny space below the door, lapping at my bare toes. Maybe it’s my imagination, but they feel like they’re on fire.
    I rattle the doorknob, knowing, just knowing she’s got the place locked up tight, harder to get into than Tim Tebow’s tighty whities. So when the door cracks ajar, I drop my hand from the knob like I’ve been burned. Long enough to question whether I really want to enter the Cryptkeeper’s crib.
    A fat calico noses the door open even farther, darts from the apartment, and winds her way around my ankles. The cat’s obese, and when I say obese I mean obese. Her fat belly is literally touching the carpet below. She wears herself out from toiling around my ankles and saunters across the hall into my apartment.
    “Uh, make yourself at home, Cally,” I call, to which she replies, “Mew.” Not a “meow,” like a proper cat would respond, but the half-hearted greeting of an unhealthy cat too breathless to properly purr.
    Shaking my head at the feline’s antics, I push open Mrs. Spearman’s door the rest of the way. The air inside smells like putrid cat piss and cheap kitty litter. The foul aroma is heightened by the air unit blasting hot air from the wall to my left. Covering my mouth and nose, I scamper across the apartment and turn off the heat.
    Cats lounge around on various pieces of furniture, some long-haired, some short. All with varying hues of fur. They’re not as friendly as Cally. They stare at me much the way their owner sometimes does: with accusatory eyes and rigid postures. I’ve never owned a cat, but I’ve always kind of thought of them as my spirit animal. Aloof. Neurotic. Independent. Selective with their affection.
    A few months ago I happened across a news article online that claimed to prove cats would eat their human owner’s remains within a couple days after their demise, whereas dogs would go almost a week before sinking their teeth into their dead master’s flesh. I’m not sure what brings this article to mind. Maybe the hell cats staring at me from their various perches around the room, or the dirty bottoms of Mrs. Spearman’s feet protruding from the bathroom doorway.
    Either way, this is what I’m thinking when I find my elderly neighbor dead.
    ***
    Madi arrives at my doorstep demanding my attention less than an hour later. Sheer determination is set in her deep blue eyes, but it fades easily enough once she notices my spooked expression. The coroner has come and gone. A couple dark-suited men from the local funeral home wheeled Mrs. Spearman away on a rickety stretcher-type thing, her body covered in a black velvet cloth. A horde of emotionless cats watched her as she went. Emotionless until the blue-uniformed men wielding catch poles arrived.
    My apartment door is propped open, and I sit on the couch, twisted around, watching animal control dart in and out of the apartment across the hall. Cats run amuck, and more than one