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kill those cats. When I’m dead those fucking cats will be shitting and pissing on my grave.’
    â€˜I don’t think it’s legal to bury humans in backyards.’
    â€˜Fucking vermin. The basement stinks of cat. It seeps through the foundation. I’ll be trapped underground, steeped in cat piss.’
    â€˜I thought you wanted to be cremated.’
    The cats are her world now. Her enemies. All her life she’s protested against violence. Now she wants to slaughter felines.
    â€˜There’s some wacko in Calgary,’ I say, ‘skinning cats and ripping out their entrails.’
    â€˜Do you have his number?’
    â€˜Remember,’ I say, in an effort to change the subject, ‘how Taliban women’s bones get all soft from never going outside? That’s what’s going to happen to you.’
    â€˜I go outside.’
    â€˜To put the garbage out and chase the cats.’
    â€˜I’m taking time off, alright, give me a break. For the first time in my life I’m resting.’
    Call that resting? Pacing, plant-killing, cat-chasing?
    â€˜Nobody’s saying go back to work,’ I say. ‘Just go outside for more than two minutes.’
    This is a switch because she used to be the one telling me to get off my ass. I start making a peanut butter sandwich.
    â€˜How was school?’ she asks. What she wants to know is did anybody ask about her. I don’t tell her nobody asks anymore, except old Blecher who makes Drew’s skin crawl. She actually said that: ‘Blecher makes my skin crawl.’
    â€˜We had an assembly with a cop,’ I say. ‘He told us if we live by the sword, we’ll die by the sword. Oh, and Mr. Zameret had a stroke.’ Zameret’s one of the geography teachers. When he isn’t talking about
tectonic plates or something he’s washing his hands. He says he never gets sick because he washes his hands all the time.
    â€˜Is he going to be alright?’ she asks.
    â€˜He’s a total vegetable. He was lying on his kitchen floor all weekend in shit and piss. The other teachers thought it was weird that he was absent since he’s never sick. Brimmers sent Coombs over to check on him. The police had to break down the door.’
    Drew drops her head into her hands and starts convulsing.
    â€˜I didn’t think you liked him,’ I say.
    â€˜He has no one to look after him.’
    Who does? Is she imagining I’m going to stick around to change her diapers?
    She puts the kettle on for the thousandth time. ‘He’d made big plans for retirement. Florida, golfing, the whole bit.’
    â€˜Good. Means he’s got cash for a nurse.’
    â€˜Sometimes, Lemon, you are so harsh.’ She wanders off with her kettle on the boil. She’ll forget about it. If I don’t turn it off, the house will burn down. Which might be alright.
    So I’m up in a tree, which was peaceful until a group of crystal-meth abusers showed up. They don’t notice me, which is why I sit in trees. Nobody ever looks up. Most people trudge through life staring at the sidewalk. I recognize one of the druggies, she used to be one of those artsy types who’s always doodling in little notebooks. She’s really skinny now because ‘tina’- I love it that they give this lethal drug a girl’s name - makes you lose your appetite. Tina is cheap and causes weight loss, which makes it real popular among teenage girls. The hitch is it’s highly addictive so pretty soon you start stealing to pay for it. Anyway, this artsy girl, Shannon, couldn’t cut it academically. She dropped out and started staying out all night, only showing up at her parents’ to steal techno-gizmos she could sell. I know all this because Shannon’s mother kept expecting Drew, the school principal, to do something about it. Drew sicced old Blecher on Shannon, which probably made drug abuse look pretty