Black Cat Crossing

by Fitz Molly

The cat slapped my face with his left paw. “Stop it already! We’ve been over this a million times. I have sensitive little kitty ears with ultrasonic hearing. You can’t turn the TV up past level eight. And you especially can’t scream like a wild banshee.”

  “This isn’t really happening. There are no such things as talking cats,” I said, sitting up.

  The cat was actually super cute when he wasn’t being so violent. His coat was sleek and shiny and he had a super long tail with a white tip at the end. He hopped off me and settled down into a sitting stance in front of me, silently licking his paws.

  “Sakara, you’re really starting to annoy me, plus I’m famished and you know how I get when I’m hangry,” he said, holding up one of his adorable little paws and baring his pointy kitty talons for display. He reached out to one of the silk dresses hanging up in the closet, snagged his claws into it and slowly swiped them down, leaving five strips of material where there used to be just one.

  He looked at me as if he were waiting for me to react but I had no idea whose clothes they were. “Oh, I see. Don’t care about your cheap Gucci summer dress? How about your beloved Prada wrap? In your signature fire engine red color, Sakara?” he asked as he hopped over to a cherry red silk scarf. This time, he went at it with both claws, shredding it into little red ribbons on the ground.

  We both perused the damage and stared at each other.

  “Why do you keep calling me Sakara?” I asked.

  “That’s your name, you moron,” he said. “Sakara Decker.”

  Sakara didn’t sound like a normal name. Courtney, Ava, Kirsten, and Lauren were normal names, not Sakara. I looked down at my hands and didn’t recognize them. They were long and thin, tapering to that same shiny red color the cat claimed I loved so much. The manicure featured tiny gold speckles on the tips, which seemed a little gaudy but closely matched the decor I awoke to in the bedroom. I lifted up my hair that hung down past my shoulders. Jet black and stick straight, it was as sleek and smooth as the cat’s hair. Was this my natural hair color? Or did I dye it black? I looked like a walking, matching replica of the hideous bedroom decor.

  Popping up, I looked at myself in the full-length mirror. I was Asian? Now the long, black hair made sense. But not the fact that I could only speak English. Not a single Asian word came into my head. Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean...the only words coming up were food orders which didn’t really clue me into what type of Asian I was. I had on a body-hugging red satin dress and matching D’Orsay pumps. Maybe someone else did my makeup for me today. This was way too much red and way too much makeup. I immediately reached for a tissue and wiped off the bright red lipstick and all of the makeup caked on my face.

  The cat let out a loud yowl as he tore up another body-contouring red dress. If he only knew how much I disliked that color. I still had no idea who I was but I could tell that I was more of a pink pastel, flowy dress – of which there was absolutely none of in this closet - sort of gal.

  We could be stuck here for weeks if this cat decided to tear apart every item in this massive, triple room of clothes. I walked further inside and took a closer look around. There were tons of formal gowns, shoes and matching accessories in the first room. Most of the labels were Prada but it contained a fair share of Burberry, Chanel, Hermes, Armani and Ralph Lauren as well.

  The second room was comprised of purses, neatly enclosed behind glass cases, as if they were being exhibited at a store. Maybe the person who lived here re-sold items online. No one person could have possibly worn that much stuff, as evidenced by the many price tags still hanging on unworn pieces of clothing.

  The third room seemed to be dedicated to the more casual, everyday loungewear. There were tons of yoga pants, capris, jeans and tops. Naturally, matching footwear, accessories and hats applied to this section, too. Unfortunately, the only color options were black or red.

  How rich was this mysterious person? I should probably get out of here before they returned and had me arrested for trespassing and allowing a crazy cat to destroy their property.

  “Where am I?” I asked, again to no one in particular, certainly not the talking cat whose voice I was clearly fabricating in my own head.

  “Inside your closet, you nimwit,” said the cat.

  “My closet?” I asked.

  “Does it look like I could wear this stuff?” he asked.

  I owned all of this? No wonder his catty claws went all kamikaze on everything; he wanted to get a rise out of me. Why didn’t I recognize anything? Why didn’t I know my name? And why did this cat keep insulting me?

  “I think I have amnesia,” I replied. That and some sort of brain defect because I could still hear the talking cat. Although, at this point, I was slightly happy someone knew who I was.

  “Ohmigosh, you lobotomized yourself. I told you to make the root beer from scratch like the grimoire specified for the forgetting potion,” said the cat, pointing his long black kitty tail over towards root beer float remnants on the night stand.

  “Potion?” I asked, eager to hear him elaborate but instead he bounced out of the room and returned with a set of keys. The big diamond-encrusted heart charm hanging from the keychain said: Sakara Knows.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Your witch-mobile keys so we can now go to the Cheesecake Factory,” he said. “I’ll show you where the garage is and tell you how to get there.”

  “I just told you I have amnesia and you want to go eat?” I asked.

  “Hangry,” he emphasized by shredding some more clothes that I didn’t recognize.

  “Amnesia,” I said, pointing to my head.

  Chapter Two

  In the end, I was slightly afraid of the cat and surrendered to his dinner demands by following him through what felt like a mile of house until we reached a massive garage that looked more like a warehouse. I still didn’t recognize a single thing, including all seven cars, which appeared to be staring back at me. However, in keeping with everything else, they were all shiny red. I chose the closest one, which had Maserati embossed on the steering wheel.

  If I were worried about age appropriate shows, I didn’t have to be. The cat pulled up a cute cartoon called Paw Patrol on Netflix.

  While the cat was busy watching TV on his iPad in the car, I covertly GPS’d myself to the nearest emergency room by using the car navigation on silent mode. He was a small cat so the bucket seats in the sports car didn’t allow him to see outside and look at his iPad at the same time. I held my breath and crossed my fingers that his eyes stayed glued to his screen and he would not look up.

  Once I parked the car and he saw our destination, he started yelling obscenities at me. Ignoring him, since he was obviously a figment of my imagination, I pursued my mission to figure out what was wrong with me. I got out of the car and shut it behind me, locking the cat inside with the windows cracked just enough for air. The car dashboard said it was forty degrees out and the car was parked in a garage on the bottom level so there was no chance he’d overheat while he waited there. I hit the lock switch on the key fob and made a beeline for the receptionist, eager to tell her I was losing my mind and needed an MRI stat.

  “Did you forget what a restaurant is?” asked the cat, already digging little kitty daggers into my leg. “You’re at the wrong place.”

  “How did you get out?” I asked. The closet door was no surprise. The handle could’ve easily been reached and pulled down by his paw but no way could he open car doors.

  “You programmed all of the car doors to open and close automatically for me on voice command,” he replied.

  That seemed excessive, even for a die-hard cat lover. But no less believable than a talking cat so I simply accepted it and let it go. I was here to get answers, real ones that weren’t made up by a talking cat I conjured up in my head.

  I winced at the pain and possible blood loss from the icepick nails digging into my leg. The receptionist stood up and looked over the counter at the cat still attached to
me.

  “No cats allowed inside,” warned the receptionist. She looked more like a schoolteacher or a strict librarian and her hair was pulled into a tight bun that gave her a drill sergeant vibe. But she failed to deter the cat from his current position or his insults. He was still ranting about all the ways he could make my life miserable if I didn’t march back to the car right now and take him to the Cheesecake Factory.

  “Can you hear him talking?” I asked, looking from the receptionist to the cat. Of course, the cat chose that exact moment to clam up, and I shook my leg with him on it. “Say something.”

  “She can’t hear me, you dimwit. She’s not a witch. She’s just a human,” he said.

  Great. Now he was going all Harry Potter on me. How could I manage to remember that movie but nothing about myself? I distinctly remembered watching the entire series and reading all of the books, too.

  “Get that fleabag out of here or I’ll have you thrown out,” said the receptionist, already motioning over to the security guard in the far corner.

  I leaned down and pried the cat off my leg before handing him to the security guard who was now standing in front of me. “This isn’t my cat. You can take him to animal control or whatever.”

  The cat gasped. “I will kill you, Sakara Decker! And then I’ll kill you again and then some.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. The receptionist agreed with me and hastily admitted me into the hospital right after that. The good news was: once the cat was gone, the voice in my head vanished, too.

  Three hours later, I had every conceivable test performed on me but no medical explanation for what was wrong with me or why I fabricated a talking cat as my only companion. The doctor came in holding a chart with my results.

  “This looks like a classic case of psychologically-induced amnesia. You’re perfectly healthy. Your bloodwork came back normal and we didn’t find any brain damage on the CT or the MRI scans. Your driver's license confirms the name you said the cat called you: Sakara Decker,” he said.

  So that was my real name? Why didn’t I think to look for a driver’s license? Maybe the cat was right to keep insulting my intelligence. If I’m not particularly scholastic, perhaps I was a high school dropout, which could explain why I can’t remember what school I graduated from?

  “Don’t you find it weird that I heard a talking cat?” I asked. That couldn’t be right. My brain was clearly broken despite the test results.

  “I’m not a psychiatrist but more than likely, it was simply your subconscious working out an emotional trauma with the nearest living object, i.e., the cat,” he said. He scribbled something down on a pad of paper, ripped it off and paperclipped it onto the stack of papers he held in his hands. “I’m adding a referral for a psychiatrist that specializes in schizophrenia. I suggest you start seeing him immediately.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Why do you think it’s emotional?”

  “You managed to drive yourself here using GPS, you knew what a hospital is, you still know how to read, write, do math and other basic skills. The only things you’ve forgotten are related to your personal identity and anything associated with it, like where you’re from, the school you went to and your favorite ice cream flavor. The associated temporal memory loss is probably related to the emotional memories you’re trying to suppress. Maybe Halloween is a traumatic holiday for you and that’s why you couldn't remember what today is. But you’re perfectly healthy. There’s no medical basis for your memory loss,” he said, folding up my chart. “You’re free to go whenever you want. Here are your discharge papers and the information for the psychiatrist.”

  He handed me the stack of papers with all my test results confirming a perfectly healthy diagnosis.

  When I took the papers from him, something weird happened. A big gust of wind passed through me, followed by a flash of white lightning. I looked around for an air vent but saw nothing. Instead, my brain was bombarded with all different images. One was the nurse who came in earlier, the next was a hotel room with red rose petals and a bottle of champagne beside a huge diamond ring. I suddenly felt anxious, impatient and nervous all at the same time. It was as if I couldn’t wait to propose to the nurse tonight and ask her to marry me.

  “Whoa,” I said, lying back down on the exam table.

  “What’s wrong?” asked the doctor, rushing over to check my pulse and feel my head.

  “I just had a movie or TV show flashback. But it’s like the images haven’t happened yet,” I said.

  Maybe I’m an actress and those were lines or scenes I was replaying in my head, which could be why I felt such strong emotions with each memory. Perhaps I was trying to get into character.

  “It could be either. What was the memory?” asked the doctor.

  “It felt like a future vision or something I hope will happen. I’m not sure which but I saw myself planning to propose to the nurse that was just in here. And I’m going to do it tonight at the Maple Garden Bed and Breakfast. Specifically, in their honeymoon suite, which is completely decked out with rose petals and champagne,” I said.

  The doctor ran over and shut the exam room door. “Did she tell you that? I have been planning this proposal for weeks and I wanted it to be a surprise. I can’t believe she knows.”

  I shook my head no. The nurse barely spoke more than two words to me, she was in such a hurry. “She didn’t tell me anything.”

  He let out a jovial chuckle and whispered, “I know she put you up to this. She’ll do anything to find out when she’s getting that ring. Do me a favor and just pretend like you don’t know anything if she asks?”

  That would be easy. I nodded my head in agreement. “That’s really sweet of you. How romantic,” I said.

  He crossed his fingers and said, “I hope she says yes.”

  He gave me a small wink before exiting the room. That was bizarre. I thought about chasing him down to explain that I seriously had no idea about his secret plan but I was wearing one of those open-back gowns for the exam, which was an improvement over that tacky red dress I’d have to squeeze back into.

  Maybe I was still asleep and this was all just a weird dream. Or my subconscious was trying to make the cat’s insistence that I was a witch feel more real. Or maybe the nurse did tell me about it and I was suffering from amnesia all over again. I looked down at the psychiatrist’s number. Maybe I should call him now.

  I got dressed, grabbed my purse and pulled out my keys. The moniker on my keychain was mocking me. Sakara Knows was such a weird thing to hang on a keychain and moreover, I knew nothing about anything.

  It seemed strange that they could simply allow me to walk out of here without fixing my memory leak. What was I supposed to do now? Just wait and hope I remembered who I was? Did I have a job I needed to show up for tomorrow? I could be some high-powered executive considering all those fancy clothes and that huge mansion. Did I have parents? Of course, I had parents. Everyone has parents. But who were my parents?

  Wow, I really was slow. Phone contacts! Why didn’t I think to scroll through and check those? Oh, right. Because I had a psychotically food-obsessed cat threatening my life if I didn’t take him out for his Halloween birthday.

  Thank God for facial recognition or I’d never have been able to unlock my phone. I could GPS the route back to my house from the car. Did I live alone? There were six other cars in the garage when I left but the cat said they all belonged to me. As soon as the phone unlocked, its wallpaper came up with a picture of me and the cat eating dessert together at the Cheesecake Factory. Oh, no! That cat. I scrolled through the picture gallery and only found pictures of me and the cat, some at the house and around town but mostly at the Cheesecake Factory. That cat was obviously mine and apparently, I liked taking him with me to the Cheesecake Factory.

  I went back out to the lobby and found the security guard to ask him to give me the cat back.

  “You told me it wasn’t your cat,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air d
efensively. “Are you one of those people who adopts kittens and then gets rid of them when they’re no longer cute and cuddly?”

  That sounded awful and I honestly had no idea if I were that kind of a person. But judging by the plethora of cat pictures in my phone, I doubted it.

  “I came into the emergency room because I have amnesia. Doesn’t that qualify as a good enough excuse for not knowing whether I owned a cat or not?” I asked, showing him the diagnosis on my discharge papers.

  He seemed to ponder that for a moment and then accepted my explanation with a shrug. “I called animal control but some guy in the waiting room offered to take him instead.”

  “What! You gave my cat away to a complete stranger?” I asked. “Why would you do that?”

  As a hospital security guard, he was probably used to seeing crazy people all the time, which was why he simply ignored my now hysterical arms pumping up and down in complete exasperation. Most likely, he also saw the psychiatric schizophrenia referral that was paperclipped to the top. He pointed to the same pseudo librarian/receptionist at the front. “She has his contact information if you want to find your cat.”

  Chapter Three

  By some miracle, the catnapper, Alistair Van Fossen, left a business card with the receptionist. All right, so he wasn't a catnapper so much as a cat rescuer, but still. Who takes a cat from a woman with amnesia?

  Wait. Was I a grown adult woman? Was I a high school girl? Was I a geriatric senior citizen? How old was I?

  I whipped out my driver’s license and subtracted my birthdate from today’s date on my phone. I was twenty-seven. That wasn’t too bad. I could legally drink alcohol, drive a car, and didn’t have to worry about finding a date for the prom.

  It was pretty late by the time I left the hospital so the prospect of finding this Alistair Van Fossen dude still in his office at this time of night was pretty slim. I decided to call ahead first to make sure he was there. He didn’t sound at all happy about taking the cat and was more than overjoyed when I explained what happened, especially after I promised to retrieve the animal. I wondered if the cat was shredding up all the clothes in his closet like he did with mine. He said he had to leave in thirty minutes for a blind date and was in a small office building inside a mall called Fashion Plaza. It was only ten minutes from the hospital so I confirmed that I would be there in time.