I took it up before council. Even waited till the visitor comment portion. And they know what they're doing. They put it at the very end because they figure no one's going to sit through two hours of talk on zoning ordinances just to bitch about an abandoned house. And then I raised my hand, very politely, and stood, and looked Council President Persch right in the face and said, “Goddamnit, Steven, what are you going to do about that house?”
      “Who are you and what are you talking about?” he said. But, he knew. He fucking knew. I explained and he said, “Well, Mr. Porter, that is a problem, but unfortunately it’s a common problem these days."
      He directed me to the borough code officer, Mr. James, a small man with a big mustache standing at the back of the room; I filled out some paperwork; and I waited.
      I sat in my house on a stack of old newspapers in the second-floor junk room. I stared out at it. That house. My window into its window. And inside that window, there on the wood floor, was one of them. A dead cat, well dead, laid out and dead. Just laying there. Never to be scooped up. Never to be vacuum sealed in a medical-grade plastic bag. Never to be incinerated. Never to have its incinerated ashes sealed in a medical-grade plastic bag and then burned. Because there was no one and there would never be anyone.
      I leaned closer to my window, just so it could see my disapproval, and I could see its ribs, the dead cat’s ribs. Not just through its skin, but out in the air, its ribs, like a broken slinky.
      And with my nose against the glass, a strong wind came, and that house swayed. It was so close, our houses were so close; they almost touched. They may have touched.
      And I thought, you won’t make me flinch, house, and gritted my teeth and just stared right into its unblinking windows. But, with that house closest to my house, probably to rub it in my face or in some scheme to make me back down, I saw it happen. Out of that dead cat, up and out of its ribs, something climbed.
      I tried to vomit. I put half my fingers in my throat but nothing came. I jumped and ran to the bathroom. I yanked the hot-water knob. Nearly wrenched my wrist. I kneeled before the tub.
      What could have climbed out of it? I yelled. I tried to see it again in my mind. What was it? Maggots? Disease? Some worm-like soul? I shoved my hands in the water; it burned. Held them under till the burning felt like clean. I put my hands over my eyes. And under the heat of my fingers, I could see it. A dead cat. It was another fucking dead cat climbing out of that dead cat.
      I lay down beside the tub because sleep was the only way to escape it. I closed my eyes. Rolled once to the right and once to the left. I rolled again and then the sweat came, because, whatever that was, wouldn’t it be coming for my house? I had seen it and it had seen me and wouldn’t it be coming for me?
      It’s so close. No matter how little its dead dead-cat legs are. It was so close. And even the air. Couldn’t even that cat carcass’s air, that volume that made its gut bloat, get over here? It’d be too easy. Air goes everywhere. That’s exactly what it would do. It’d sneak out of that house and climb my steps. And it would find me. It would climb those steps and climb my legs and climb my lungs.
      I’d never sleep again.
      I ran to the municipal building. Out my door and past my car, on the sidewalk, in the road, and 10 minutes later was using my fists against the front of the building. I pounded and yelled for them to open up. But they didn’t and I cried.
      I walked around back, looking for a light or an open window to climb in, and as I got toward the back, there was something in the air like skunk and burned leaves. Oh, dear God, I thought. What was in that house, what was in that cat, that dead cat, is out. It will climb the lungs of every person. We will all breathe it and will all do what it does.
      I covered my face with my shirt and peaked around the corner. It was Mr. James, and out from under his big mustache, like a quarter wig, poked a small cigarette. He saw me, threw it down, covered it with his foot, and brushed his mustache with the back of his hand.
      I was out of breath and yelling. “We need to do something about this,” I said, my hands on my knees.
      “But I’m trying to do better,” he said.
      “Goddamnit, that’s not good enough,” I said. “There’s corpses everywhere.”
      “Really? Corpses? Where?”
      “I saw them.”
      “If there's corpses, we have to do something,” he said.
      He drove us in his little pickup and we tried the front door but it wouldn't move. He held his mustache in his hand and looked at me. I kicked the door but it only clattered. I kicked again and threw myself against it. He grabbed me by the shoulders.
      “We can't break in there,” he said. “We can call the police, but we can't break in there.”
      I shook my head. “There’s corpses in there,” I said, but he just stared at me. What do you do with a mad man? With people who just won’t listen.
      I pushed him. I had to. I had to snap him out of it. I threw my hands against his shoulders but he just stepped back.
      “Sir,” he said and I pushed again. “I’ll file a code complaint tomorrow. That’ll get this guy. This will get him and his corpses. And, I’ll file it directly with the county. Oh, the county will teach him.” And I pushed again.
      “That won’t do anything about the cats, you asshole,” I said. “Who’s going to clean up the cats? I bet their corpses are breeding as we speak.”
      And I pushed again. My hands hit his shirt pocket and out popped a glass pipe and lighter. I picked them up and ran. I said, “I'm taking these until you fix this, you asshole. This town is fucked.”
      Running wouldn’t solve the dead cat problem – I knew that – or keep my house safe from dead cats, but even if I did it for the right reasons, whether I liked it or not, I was a thief now. I had to accept that. I couldn't go home. They would look for me there. Crooks are always stupid; I wouldn't be a stupid crook.
      Even still, I worried for my house. It was my responsibility and I had failed my house. I hung my head. I wandered the streets. Up and down each one. All the houses dark. And even though they were all dark, I knew the ones that had been abandoned like I had abandoned mine. At least one on each block. Poor dead orphans infested with dead and living animals running in them, out of them, dying in them, out of them. Squirrels. Rats. Opossums. Cats.
      There was one, one long-dead orphaned house with a big gaping hole under the roof with rafters like dead cat ribs, so old that it was probably dead itself, and I stood and stared at it. My hands on my hips, biting my lip. I wanted it to know from my face that it couldn’t be what it was. I wanted to guilt it into not being dead anymore, because sometimes even responsible homeowners get into situations where they have no choice but to become thieves and crooks and exiles and part ways with their beautiful, vulnerable homes. I wanted it to know that it wasn’t OK for it to just give up and die. I looked it up and down, around its base, and sniffing around a broken basement window was the fattest cat I’d ever seen.
      He was about to run, if he could, to get away and breed; I knew that for sure. But, I ran at him, and yelled, “it’s all your goddamned fault and the goddamned fault of your goddamned kind,” and I kicked him, and he fell in the window. I ran to the porch, kicked in the door, ran downstairs and there he was, in the broken window’s light. That fat bastard on his back pawing at the air like a turtle rocking on its shell. “How did you get so fat?” I yelled. “You’re a fat dead fucking cat, aren’t you, and you’re probably at capacity with dead cats.
      “I’m not going to let those dead cats get out of your belly,” I yelled; he was too fat to get back on his feet and probably too fat to hear. “Your dead cats have already harmed too many.”
      I found a shovel and began to dig in the dirt floor the fat dead cat’s grave. He looked like a cockroach; he looked like he had a hundred legs and they all thought they were running. I used the side of my foot to knock him in.
      “Let this grave, this ground, cleanse you, dead cat,” I said, and, using the shovel, scattered him with dirt. His legs wouldn’t stop, though, and they kicked it everywhere. It wouldn’t go in the hole. Wouldn’t fill the hole, cover or cleanse that dead cat. I filled the shovel and tried again. Nothing. I raised the shovel over my head, jumped, and brought it down on that squirming bastard, but he must have been too dead to die.
      “What are you?” I yelled.
      I was panicked. My eyes were everywhere. They say nature always puts the antidote near the poison, and I ended up glad my eyes were everywhere because they found the antidote: a gas can. I upended it over that dead cat and praise God the gas came out and stuck. “Fuck you, dead cat,” I said.
      I pulled Mr. James’ pipe from my pocket, threw it, hit the dead cat in its bloated pouch of dead cats. Then I pulled out the lighter, a Zippo, and lit it, and dropped it on him. And it went up like a fountain of flame. Like I’d opened a door to hell and that dead cat and all the dead cats inside it were falling through.
      But that door didn’t seem to be closing; it got so hot. I ran outside and from the street watched. The whole house furry with flame and soon gone.
      It was gone and I was the one that made it gone. I had cleansed it. And, it was so simple. I could do it to every dead house in town, dead and filled with dead cats. This town then the dead broad country. I could march this land with a satchel of gasoline and Zippos like an anti-Johnny Appleseed, uprooting instead of planting. And save all houses, living and dead, from the dead cat scourge.
      But what about my house? Epiphany or not, I’d forgotten. I’d left my own home unattended when right next door was a dead house with a dead cat full of dead cats and they were probably breeding. Probably full of them, preparing to make the transformation into one big dead cat, like a Godzilla-sized, dead Garfield doll, lumbering over my house, trying to intimidate it into being dead. Trying to touch it. That’s how it’d spread wouldn’t it? From one house to the next. I started to hyperventilate. But hyperventilating would not kill that cat. I ran.
      But when I got there, it was still a house and it wasn’t touching my house, but Mr. James was still there. He may have been dead, but he was there.
      He said, “There’s nothing here. What’s wrong with you?”
      I yelled, “They’ve already go to you, dead man.” And I threw myself against the door, bounced off, and tried again. And, when I got in, I was running again.
      But then I stopped. The air was too thick. I couldn’t see. It was a haze, a fog of hair and mummified cat skin. It was in my nose, holding it open, prying it open. It was bonding to my lungs.
      It was too late; it’s all over, I thought.
      I put my shirt over my face and ran around the room. From one wall, to the other side, until I hit it, and back in another circle. But there was no antidote. No gasoline or fire of any kind. I ran back outside and slammed the door to keep it in. I yelled at Mr. James, “Give me your lighter and your shirt.”
      He pulled off his shirt and said, “You took my lighter.”
      “You piece of shit,” I said and threw his shirt down.
      I ran to the house next door and yelled, “Give me your fire,” but there was no one there. There was nothing there. And the same for the next house down. And the next one.
      Then I remembered: There was fire in my house. I ran there, up to the second floor, filled a bin with clothes, lit the stove and lit an undershirt, tossed it on top, and ran while the fire erupted in the bin. I ran next door, told Mr. James to get the fuck out of the way, and threw the bin inside.
      And it burned, but not very well. Not like the house before. The dead cats had it, I thought. They had taken control, and goddamnit, I would not let this happen.
      I ran back to my house, grabbed all my clothes, and back and threw them on the fire. And it was better, but wasn’t right. So, back to my house for my La-Z-Boy, backwards out the door, waddling and stumbling and looping, yelling at Mr. James, “That’s right, you fucking asshole, don’t help me.” But he just gave me dead dirty eyes, so I dropped the chair and slapped the phone out of his hand, and picked the chair back up, ran in the house, and lobbed it on top. And the fire was out. I put my fist in my mouth and thought about giving up. Thought about chalking this round up for the dead cats and calling it a night, to regroup and maybe start a militia, get government funding and an arsenal, but then I had this image of the coming apocalypse, Garfield, and his henchmen, Felix and Sylvester and Snagglepuss riding down from the burning sky on horseback to finish the job.
      So back to my house, and thank God the stove was still on. Ripped a curtain from the wall, dangled it on the fire and ran like a dead cat with a burning tail, threw it under the chair and finally, all my worldly possessions were burning, and the flames were punching threw the ceiling. I slowly backpedaled out the house and stood in the yard beside Mr. James. I started to cry.
      “It’s finally happening,” I said, and wiped a tear away. “I finally did it.”
      “The police will be here soon,” Mr. James said.
      “You’re right,” I said. “They should be here to see this.”
      “Your house is on fire,” he said pointing. I thought it was strange he wasn’t wearing a shirt. “And it’s a good thing, too, because your house is a shithole. I’ve got more code complaints about it than any other place in the borough. Do you even live there?”
      “My house isn’t a shithole,” I said. “I live there.”
      The fire was growing, and now my house, too, was more fire than house. It billowed smoke and I pulled my shirt over my face to keep the dead cat vapors out.
      But, I began to understand what he meant.
      “You’re right; this is a good thing,” I said, and slapped Mr. James on his bare back. “It’s the only way.”
      Although over the years I had filled my house with shirts I had taken from other people and newspapers I had found in the street, furniture the Salvation Army couldn’t sell, and really had just made it a home, I wasn’t meant to sit idly by. I’d been given a mission. And men with missions aren’t meant to have homes. I was to roam the Earth like David Carradine, if David Carradine wasn’t a dead cat and instead was some kind of super Johnny Appleseed that actually did things that matter.