Cat trap!

By Eric Filipkowski, June 17, 2014

After my two week vacation to Walt Disney World, I returned to my apartment building only to find the hallway outside my apartment flooded with jelly beans.

“Ah ha!” I said accusingly to my building manager, “I caught you red-handed!”

He was there with a bunch of workers holding shovels. “Caught me doing what?” He asked angrily.

“You were sneaking into my apartment to see if I had a cat!” I knew this because right before I left for my trip, I sealed my apartment’s windows and filled the place with $30,000 worth of jelly beans. Then I set up a CD boombox to loudly blast the sound of a cat crying on repeat.

You see, my apartment building has a rule against pets, but just because there’s a rule, doesn’t mean anybody will actually follow it. My neighbors all seemed to be harboring an illegal cat or two. My fear was that I would be the guy who gets a cat and while I was at work, it would meow and the manager would hear this and sneak into my apartment and bust me. Well he wasn’t counting on this diabolical genius to come up with such a brilliant scheme, I tell you!

“I put these jellybeans inside so that if anybody opened my door, the jellybeans would fall out and I would know that you had invaded my privacy!”

He just stood there in what I assumed was disbelief at being so badly outsmarted. However, when he finally said something, I learned that this was not the case at all.

“So let me get this straight: you went to all of this trouble just to “catch me” doing something that was fully within my rights to do? Obviously if there is an animal crying loudly enough to disturb the neighbors, seemingly in need of some help or at the least, food and water, that constitutes exactly the kind of emergency that a manager gets paid to handle, right?”

I just nodded, because he was mad and if I said something, he would probably be able to tell I was about to cry.

“So how were you going to get into your apartment without doing the same thing?”

I guess I hadn’t thought of everything.

“I don’t know, I could climb in through a window maybe?” I wiped the tears from my eyes and congratulated myself on thinking on my feet! That wasn’t half bad!

He just shook his head. “If you really wanted a cat that badly,  you could have just talked to me and I would probably just charge you a $250 cleaning deposit. Now you’re going to have to reimburse me for the cleaning crew that has to remove what they estimate to be at least 800,000 or so jelly beans, plus any separate dumping fees. All told, you’re probably looking at five or six grand.”

“Well on the plus side, I don’t have to pay that deposit!”

Again, he  just sat there for a few seconds, staring at me, before he went off. “You’re not getting a cat. You’re not living here for one more minute, I’m evicting your stupid ass! I don’t need this shit!”

If this had been any other moment in time besides October 17, 1989, I would have been in a load of trouble, but fortunately for me, this was the exact moment that the Loma Prieta Earthquake hit.

Everything started shaking and then came the deafening roar of the building literally being split in half. I watched in horror and then relief as the portion of the hallway that my manager and the workers were standing on, burdened by thousands of pounds of jelly beans, collapsed and dropped away from the floor I was standing on, never to bother me again!

I ran for it and never looked back and now I have tons of cats, dogs and even a monkey because I live in a mansion that I bought with the proceeds of my insurance settlement that I got because I was so traumatized by having to watch those six men die that day.