My Neighbor's Cat

By Courtney Milnestein

In early spring, after the New Year, between Hampstead and Swiss Cottage, a young man finds himself dealing with the sudden and abrupt passing of his neighbor, a situation that obliges him to take on a small cat suddenly orphaned.

Trying to put together what went wrong, searching for answers, something to make sense of the loss, he begins tracing the steps of his neighbor’s life, learning the differences between them, and trying to make peace with his new pet.

This is a story about change, about growing older, and about the things that separate us, regardless of the community we share.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Jun 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685504731

Book preview

My Neighbor’s Cat

By Courtney Milnestein

Published by JMS Books LLC

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2023 Courtney Milnestein

ISBN 9781685504731

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

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No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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My Neighbor’s Cat

By Courtney Milnestein

It had been mewling for about a day before I let myself in. Between our two flats was a small utility box for the water meter; as no one else every came up to the top floor, my neighbor always left his spare key hidden away in the dust beneath the meter, just in case he locked himself out, and so, knowing this, and after having spent the morning going back and forth, knocking on the door and hearing only the sound of the cat, I decided to let myself in.

There had been a bad smell in the hallway for a few days. I’m not usually the kind of person who makes a fuss, in fact, I go out of my way to avoid confrontation, or any sort of contact with others really—I think everyone here does—so I had got as far as considering talking to the landlord, a wealthy Saudi gentleman, but not as far as actually doing it.

Turning that key in the door, turning the handle and nudging the slightly swollen wood in the frame forward…I don’t know if you’ve ever smelt what death is like. In death, everything that makes us alive, everything that we are ashamed of in life is overwhelmingly manifest. I had never seen a dead body until then, and as I gazed then upon my neighbor, suspended from the rafters of the flat adjoining mine, I felt a number of things in the moments before I looked away—shame, disgust, sadness, anger, relief that I was still alive, that it wasn’t me hanging there, the stain on the rug beneath limp legs, the chair fallen to one side.

As I backed away, a tremble running through me, a fright that came from the surprise of finding death so close at my elbow, was when I saw it, a small uncertain bundle of fur, ragged and wide-eyed, not skinny enough to be considered malnourished, for it had not been left alone for that long, but nonetheless wounded by the days in which it had remained as the only thing living in the flat, the heavy form of my neighbor unmoving, the chair resting on the carpet.

Despite its fearful protests,