I was surprised when the superhero Catman moved into the long unoccupied home in my suburb across the street from me. The neighbors I talked to felt the same way. What was the Furious Feline, only a few years ago presented with a key to the city by Mayor Willis, doing in a rundown Cape Cod in a working class nabe so far from downtown and the action? No one knew where Catman used to live, but surely he deserved and needed better than this.

But maybe not. When had Catman last made a big capture? I couldn’t remember seeing the Cat Beacon in the night sky once in recent weeks, as a desperate Police Chief sought the assistance of the Furred Avenger, or reading about the crimestopper’s adventures in the Daily Metro, once so thrilling and so just. It seemed he was still living down the recent scandal of his DUI in the Catmobile where he crashed it into a police cruiser in pursuit of a bank robber who got clean away. From the looks of him now too, overweight and puffing on a cig as he prowled around his yard, his Catsuit frayed and wrinkled and probably unlaundered, he’d bottomed out pretty badly. Yep, perhaps his best days were behind him now. The Catmobile, too, looked pretty useless in Catman’s new driveway, sitting there shiny and black, but still needing a lot of body work after the DUI mishap. Maybe, I thought, he should trade it in on a Smart Car.

Catman stayed inside most of the day. Only after six, when I was home from work, would he put in an appearance at his front door, in full ratty costume. He might come out and sit on his porch chair, a can of Bud in his paw, and survey the neighborhood in his sleepy way. He never even started on the much-needed repairs to his place. No new roof, no fix to the peeling paint, not even a lawn manicure so that his yard, already choked with three-foot weeds, got worse. I don’t think Catman even owned a mower, and in the ‘burbs that’s a mortal sin.

He did put a new gas grill in the back, and soon was spending whole evenings alone behind his house, grilling fish and drinking beer in his crimestopper get-up. Not that he was completely antisocial. Every so often he’d take a short stroll down the block, belching softly, his belly sagging beneath the Cat logo on his shirt, and nod hello to everyone. Or he’d raise the hood of the Catmobile and fiddle around under there with some tools with the radio on country. Every once in a while, too, a neon blonde in a rusted-out van would visit him. But he looked bored out of his skull to be here, even his costume couldn’t hide that. I guessed he was watching for the Cat Beacon out of the corner of his eye, and ready to roll. But after all the beer he put away, you had to wonder how effective he’d be, and if it wouldn’t be a big mistake for him to try to get involved, and if the Catmobile would even start up. I thought he needed to get going on that yard and maybe take up roofing as a hobby.

Unfortunately, his feline nature stayed a part of Catman even as his heroism ran
downhill. No longer did he leap sure-footedly from rooftop to rooftop on downtown’s skyscrapers, or climb nimbly up sheer walls in pursuit of evildoers. But he sure as anything was in all the trash dumpsters at night, and yowling to beat the band at ungodly hours. It wasn’t bad enough that his own yard was a litter of beer cans and Little Friskies tins. He had to spread everyone’s garbage around. It got so I kept my garbage locked in my shed until pickup morning, and waited by it for the truck, or I’d find it spread all over the yard and even a trail of rib bones from my last cookout leading down my drive and across the street. I didn’t know if Catman was broke or just couldn’t resist my special sauce. Maybe both. Horrible as it was to think of, the neighborhood bird population declined too. We sure didn’t see as many nests in the trees as we usually do. So Catman was eating well, too well, and to be on the safe side, I hauled my kid’s sandbox into the shed and locked it every night, after I got word from a friend of what Catman did in his son’s box. That’s revolting even in a superhero.

Worst of all, though, were his tom urges. One night about a week after Catman first moved in, my wife Flo heard some strange scrabbling noises outside our front door about eleven. She looked through the Venetian blinds just in time to see Catman with his shorts down spraying our porch swing. Our female cat Fancy was in the window on the other side of the blinds, Flo said, staring out at Catman with a bizarre look in her eyes. Catman finished his territorial ritual and, with a meaningful glance at my wife, trotted across the street again back to his place and later never even gave her an apology. It was as if it never happened, though Flo got out the garden hose and disinfectant next morning.

Catman enjoyed his catnaps too. After a night of prowling and feasting on whatever, he would fall asleep on his lounger in his back yard and still be zoned out there in the morning, weekends and weekdays both. It seemed he had totally given up on being a crimefighter by now, since he took off his Catman suit once and for all and wore old jeans and sandals and went shirtless in the summer heat. I guessed he didn’t mind anymore if people knew his real identity, either, though everyone still called him Catman since no one out our way recognized him. He had a thick head of reddish hair, lots of freckles, and a pasty white body. You could see the outline of his Cat mask since the skin it used to cover around the eyes and nose was really white, at least before the sun burned him bright red all over. Catman looked like everyone else now, I’d say, only messier and lazier.

A lot of the neighborhood kids early on formed a kind of friendship with Catman, since being kids they didn’t respect the great man’s privacy, and many worshipped his legend, not quite realizing that Catman’s fortunes had gone south. Bunches of them would gather at Catman’s fence alongside his back yard and talk to him. Catman had complete control of his scalp and hair, and could change his hairdo without touching it. As the kids watched in amazement, the part on the left side of his head would travel over to the right side, and the hair lay itself down in the opposite direction. He could make the part stop in the middle too, in a sort of hippie style. I saw him do that once. It was astounding. How could a guy like this not be in something big?

He was still fairly agile too, and once, to show off for the youngsters, he pounced from his patio straight up onto his roof. Unfortunately he lost his footing up there and fell, taking out a section of rusty rain gutter as he crashed down. He landed uninjured on his feet though, and sat nonchalantly back in his lounger, to the admiration of the boys and girls, who cried, ‘Are you hurt, Catman, are you hurt?’ even though they could tell by Catman’s wave of his hand that he wasn’t. I saw that one too, since I admit I spied a lot. A celebrity doesn’t come along every day, you know, and I had dusted off my binoculars. Later I saw him install a satellite dish on his roof in about five minutes–without falling, yes! At the insistence of my son, Brad age 5, but also because Flo and I had wanted to all along, we invited Catman over for spaghetti dinner, figuring he could use a home-cooked meal. We sent Brad over to do the inviting, he was so excited. But he came back looking glum. ‘Catman says he’s busy,’ Brad said. ‘But he wants to borrow $10.’ I gave, but just that once. Of course I never got it back.

Catman’s downward spiral picked up pace. The sleek if crumpled Catmobile was replaced by a previously owned, rusted Ford Escort, and even that didn’t go anywhere except to the convenient store at 2 a.m. when Catman ran out of beer. Lacking a muffler, it reminded the whole neighborhood of Catman’s all-night drinking. Finally, about six weeks after he had moved in, Catman vanished in his Escort, his stuff put out on the street. Large catnip toys, elaborate scratching posts, monogrammed food bowls, fancy collars and a lot of hairy furniture were stacked by the curb. I imagined that Catman had overextended his credit, with the usual results.

Catman’s stuff was still on the street when who should arrive on the scene but Wonder Kid aka The Boy Crusader, Catman’s crimefighting companion. He was balding, packed a gut almost the heft of Catman’s, and had changed his hero costume for a sports shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. I wouldn’t have recognized him except for the personalized plates on his Lincoln, ‘W-Kid.’ Everybody knew the Boy Crusader had recently opened a restaurant in town named after himself, Crusader’s, and had publicly acknowledged that he was out of the justice business. More to do with his and Catman’s little incident with the Catmobile, I figured. He stood by the curb, hands on his well-padded hips, shaking his head as he surveyed the scene. He looked prosperous all right. Then he saw me watching him and came across the street.

‘Doesn’t look good,’ I told Wonder Kid.

‘Didn’t know where he was till I saw an article in the paper,’ said the Boy
Crusader. ‘Guess I’ll check the flophouses and shelters.’

‘It’s a shame,’ I said, ‘after all he’s done for this town.’

‘I offered him a job at the restaurant,’ said Boy. ‘All he had to do was greet a few
folks, shake a few hands, let me name a Catburger after him. Couldn’t be bothered. Had to be a hero, you know. Well, a man’s gotta eat.’

‘Sure does,’ I agreed. ‘Say, do you suppose my boy could have one of those cat
toys? Sure would mean a lot to him.’

‘Help yourself,’ said Wonder Kid, ‘they ain’t mine.’ Then he got back in his
huge Lincoln and drove off.

I latched onto a few. They gotta be worth something on eBay. They’re Catman’s!

————

Mike Fowler has been in Defenestration so many times he practically owns stock in the magazine. And by stock, of course, we mean delicious waffles.