I wrote in one of my short stories about addiction that “When they take drugs, most people turn into animals. Some turn into monsters.” I fit that second group. So it’s only fitting to devote a whole section to animals and all they bring out in me and what they reminisce of in my mind.

I don’t know if it’s the Internet that makes them appear so smart, or if they have always been but it is as disturbing as it is fascinating. We might also be overstimulating them to the point they became smarter and wiser and will soon smother us in our sleep. I do not know. They however never cease to fascinate me. My cat is currently teaching herself to open doors by stretching from the nearest furniture to the handle. Call it evil, I call it survival instinct. How many cats have been trapped in closed space and died for lack of water? Cats have street-cred, something a lot of us lack. Yes, maybe they’re aliens plotting to take over the human race but sometimes I tell myself the human race might need to be subdued by an intelligent species. It’s either that or artificial intelligence going all Matrix on our asses (have you told Siri you loved her/him today?).

Anyway, back to the point. I tend to think that a lot of the animal inside comes out when you take drugs. And some of the beast lurking close by comes out howling as well. That’s why I always cry when I hear Demons by Imagine Dragons. It is spot on. Animals become more human every day but humans –and all the more so addicts– become more beast by the minute. And that’s fucking scary.

I loved one cat like it was my own. And she loved me back unconditionally. She came from a long line of female cats giving birth and running away after a few years but leaving a daughter to keep on the family name: Bouboule. There was one after her that my parents abandoned when they sold the house. They had a lot on their plate when they sold said house so I said I was ok to leave her with the new owners. But let’s be honest: the new owners never said they would care of her. Anyway, she was probably happier staying where she grew up since she was still 90 per cent wild and we could barely touch her.

Nevertheless, her mother was the most loving cat I had ever met. Like a dog, she would know when I was coming back home and she would wait on the wall by my bedroom window and come into my room when I left the window open. She would never do that when I was away with my parents. And we would then spend the night crawled up together, she’d pull my hair in the morning to wake me up, I’d sneak her some ham or cheese or sweet things. And we were happy like that.

That’s until she was diagnosed with metastasized breast cancer. I got one more month with her when I visited in the summer of 2010. I knew she’s be gone by the time I’d come back in December. Nevertheless, still no news about her death in November. So I hoped. It took my ballsy 6-year-old niece to tell me she had died.

Damn, I still hate my parents for that, for thinking I was not emotionally grown-up enough to mourn my cat. Or to handle my mother cutting her thumb nerves or my father bleeding from his ass for three days, so much so he ended up in the hospital. I mourned my cat for years until I saw her in a dream and could finally let her go. I firmly believe that if my whole family had not gone through the shitstorm of addiction I’ve put them through, we would not have grown up emotionally enough to share how we do now and I would be a smothering mother to the love of life; my little Hylda, whom I love ever so dearly. She is featured here quite a bit and even has her own Facebook page where we bitch about each other in funny dialogs. We also include two other very dear cats I met along the way through one my bestest friends Louis and Aarron: Bette and Sparky.

Cats forget about people when they leave their life, they say. Does she remember her lesbian lover Bette and their adopted dumbfuck son Sparky? I wonder. Sometimes I wish we too could forget about people whose souvenir is too painful. I’d erase not a person but the very existence of drugs so I can never find them again. I’d also erase the fact that this section is also about nature as it goes hand in hand with animals.