The Cat on the Balcony
 

Jung Wheein had always wanted a cat. She wanted a cat more than anything else in the world, and when the opportunity arrived in the form of a little ball of white and orange fur, she jumped for it without another thought. The problem was...this cat was a kitten, and this kitten was a lot of work.

She hadn’t thought about the gargantuan task of shaping the little mind of a living, growing, and adapting creature. She hadn’t thought about the rambunctious energy, and the utter stupidity that sometimes came with her young kitten.

Still, she loved him more than anything else, and she liked to think she was getting the hang of this kitten-mom deal.

It was mid-April—just warm enough for light jackets, but too cool still for a drink on the balcony. April would soon give way to May, then the sweltering months of June, July, and August. In other words, Wheein would soon find herself returning to home to a solid one-bedroom box of unbreathable air, sticky moisture, and heavy, heavy heat.

It was her kitten, Ggomo’s first year in this apartment, and if Wheein was barely going to survive the summer, what chance did a tiny and—sometimes useless—creature in a fur coat have?

Fortunately, Wheein had a balcony. It wasn’t fancy—just a small, grey rectangle with a sturdy, solid fence. She barely used it herself, but she was familiar with the pleasant breeze coming in from the nearby river. If she could acclimatize Ggomo to the balcony, she could leave him out there during the summer.

It would be easy, she thought. She pictured herself laying across the couch at the height of summer, the slight breeze coming through the open balcony doors. She pictured her adorable Ggomo curled up on his cushion outside, his fur ruffling softly. It was the little things. Mostly the dream of a hassle-free, drama-free life of a kitten owner.

Also known as a completely naive fantasy.

So, here we were: mid-April. Wheein, with her orange-white kitten in one hand, pushed opened the balcony doors with the other. She had it all laid out: his bed in the corner with a few treats on top. What else did she need? Just in case, she even had a little bowl of water across from the bed.

“What do you think?” She said, nudging the cat in her hand with her cheek. Ggomo looked around curiously, itching to jump off and explore. He stretched his neck, and extended his back legs into Wheein’s torso. Well, she thought, at least he wasn’t scared.

She put him down gingerly, and watched as he sniffed everything. He wandered toward the fence, then to his bed, then to the partition dividing her and her neighbour’s balconies. Finally, he trotted over to his bed and laid his head down on an outstretched paw. Satisfied by the calm curiosity of her kitten, Wheein returned inside to make herself a cup of tea.

By the time the tea was well-steeped and thoroughly enjoyed with a good book on the couch, Wheein finally glanced up at the balcony door.

Her whole body, from her blood to the hair on her neck, froze and grew cold. Ggomo was gone.

She shot out of her seat and leapt through the open balcony door.

“Ggomo?” She called. Panic drove her voice higher and higher each time she called his name. Still, no response.

She gripped the railing and cautiously looked down onto the streets below. Suddenly, every horror story she had ever heard about cats somehow falling off balconies came flooding to her. Her heart pounded in her ears as her mind began weaving one big tapestry of frenzied, preposterous scenarios. What if he saw a bird and leapt for it? What if he wanted to explore the railing? What if he was just stupid enough to fall and die for no good reason? 

Wheein checked inside, then outside, then inside once more. She didn’t miss a single centimetre.

Finally, as she stood on the balcony on the verge of tears, she heard a little, mewling voice. She whipped her head around to the partition between her and her neighbour’s balcony. There, in the little crack between the wall and the partition, was Ggomo’s stupid little, adorable, innocent face.

“Ggomo?” she said, kneeling down, “Come back.”

It was useless.

She enticed him with a treat, placing it just beyond the partition in the hopes that he would squeeze back underneath. Then, she proceeded to watch the cat squeeze his face under the partition and bite at the treat he could not reach. In any other circumstance, it would be adorable, Wheein thought warily. 

“Ggomo!” she cried. “Come back!”

Panic quickly turned into frustration, then into anger.

She stepped back and studied the partition with her hands on her hips. The board stretched from floor to almost the ceiling, leaving only an inch of space—a space so small it must’ve pained Ggomo enough to scare him. In other words, he was never going to come back on his own.

As she could not squeeze underneath the tiny gap like her kitten, she thought about scaling the side of her balcony to get to the other side. She shook her head—she was not going to risk death because of her stupid cat.

She sighed, and kneeled down once more to poke her cat in the nose through the crack. “You idiot,” she grumbled.

Several attempts at alternating between coaxing and yelling later, Wheein found herself in front of her neighbour’s door. With a sigh, she knocked.

Silence.

She knocked again.

Oh no, she thought, what if nobody lived here? True enough, she had been so busy with everything in her own life that she’d never taken the chance to know who lived on her floor. Her apartment was soundproof enough that she could only hear the opening and closing of doors, but there were nine other apartments surrounding her own.

What if her neighbour was out of town?

Could she break in?

She retreated back inside and scribbled out a note: “My cat is on your balcony. Please allow me to retrieve him. Your neighbour in 2904, Wheein.” She taped it on her neighbour’s door, just above the door knob, then descended down the elevator to find another solution.

The concierge today was a stern-looking woman reading a newspaper. Wheein didn’t care much for striking up conversations with strangers, but the longer she left Ggomo up there on his own, the more likely she thought he might suddenly decide to leap off the side of the building.

“Excuse me,” Wheein said nervously.

The woman looked up, unamused. “How can I help you?” she said with the all the enthusiasm of a dead fish.

“Um, this might be a bit strange, but my cat is on my neighbour’s balcony, and nobody is home. Is there any way I can...get in there?”

The woman blinked, and allowed the long awkward silence to fester and sink in, as if wanting Wheein to know exactly how ridiculous she sounded. Wheein squirmed.

Finally, a small smile crept on the woman’s face. “I can probably give you their phone number, but I can’t help you break into the room. What’s your neighbour’s room number?”

Ten minutes later, Wheein was glaring down at Ggomo, who was curled up beside the partition, peacefully sleeping on the neighbour’s balcony as if nothing was wrong. As Wheein punched in her neighbour’s phone number, she couldn’t help getting even more annoyed as she thought about how many strangers she’d had to talk to today on her own free time.

She put her phone to her ear, and listened to it ring. And ring. And ring. Does this person exist? She began to wonder.

“Hi!” A woman’s voice comes through.

Wheein’s heart rate sped up, and she immediately rushed out a hasty hello.

“This is Ahn Hyejin. Leave a message!”

Of course Wheein tried to talk to a voicemail message. And as if talking to strangers weren’t enough, she had to leave a weird voicemail on a stranger’s phone too. Wheein continued to glare at Ggomo’s sleeping form. Then came the dreaded beep.

“Hi...this is going to sound a little crazy, but, uh, my name is Wheein. I live next door, and my stupid cat is on your balcony, and I’m wondering if I can come in to get him...If, uh, if you get this, can...you call me back?”

Her heart was still beating even after she hung up. The woman had a nice voice, and she just left the world’s most awkward voicemail message. She didn’t even leave her phone number. Ggomo’s stupid was definitely rubbing off on her.

Just as she was going to give her kitten another shout, she heard a door in the hallway open and close. It sounded close by, and she darted for the door. The hallway was empty and lined with closed doors, but the note on her neighbour’s door was gone.

“Oh, thank god,” she muttered, as she gave her neighbour’s door another knock.

No reply.

If somebody stole the note, she was going to burn down the whole building.

She knocked again.

Suddenly, she heard a clatter, a thump, and then a shout. “Holy sh—!” came the loud cry.

She knocked once more, but she imagined her neighbour was probably busy wrestling her cat on the balcony. Fearing the worst, she ducked back into her own unit. But just as her door closed behind her, she heard another door open.

In a moment, she was right back out in the hall.

A white and orange blur zipped around the corner, followed closely by a girl in a black spaghetti strap, stooped down with her arms out. “Get back here!” she cried.

It took a moment for the situation to sink in—and not just because her neighbour’s too-tight jeans were more than a little distracting—before Wheein remembered to go after them. When she rounded the corner, she shouted Ggomo’s name, and saw him. He sat in the middle of the hall, his tail swishing, his eyes wide. The girl was behind him, arms and legs splayed out like a starfish to stop him.

Their eyes met for a moment, and a kind of mutual understanding seemed to sweep over them as they inched closer to the kitten. Ggomo stood, ready to run.

“Come here, Ggomo,” Wheein cooed, reaching for the cat. “Good kitty.”

Ggomo didn’t move. The two humans drew closer, and closer.

Wheein was a second away from diving in and picking up the kitten, when, all of a sudden, the elevator door dinged open and out stepped a very confused couple when the cat zipped under their legs and into the elevator. The neighbour, elbowing the couple out of the way, dove after the cat first. Wheein took the extra few seconds to bow and apologize, then went in after her just as the door began to close.

Inside the elevator, the neighbour struggled with the cat in her arms. Ggomo cried out, and stretched his whole body as far away from the stranger as he could. He tried to climb on her shoulder, squirming and waving his stiff arms. Meanwhile, Wheein could not help savouring a few extra moments to watch the comical display between her cat and her beautiful neighbour before she reached in and extracted her cat.

“Thank you for your help, Hyejin,” Wheein said with a shy smile as she took the kitten into her own arms.

The girl raised both brows. “How did you know my name?”

“Oh, um, I wasn’t sure if anybody lived next door, so I asked the concierge. She gave me your number, so...I left you a voicemail. But maybe, um, just delete it? It was an awkward situation and I didn’t really know what to do, so, yeah, it was awkward. Sorry, I’m rambling a bit. I’m just happy to get him back.”

“Your cat is really something else,” her neighbour replied with a chuckle. “When I got your note on the door, I almost thought it was a joke.”

“I wish,” Wheein laughed, poking Ggomo in the nose. He shook his head, and settled sleepily into the crook of Wheein’s arms.

“What was he doing out there anyway?”

As Wheein relayed the exhausting events of the afternoon, the elevator descended to the ground floor, where nobody got on. Hyejin reached forward to press a button, and the elevator began to ascend again.

“You’ve had quite the afternoon,” she said, grinning.

Wheein smiled back nervously, deciding—at this most inopportune time—that she really liked Hyejin’s smile. Now that Ggomo was sleeping peacefully and she was alone with her neighbour, she had time to study the beautiful black-haired woman. And Hyejin was studying her too, with a kind of intensity she’d never experienced before. Wheein felt her cheeks warm.

“It was pretty stressful,” Wheein admitted.

“It must’ve been,” Hyejin replied. After a pause, she smiled once more, “This might be a selfish thought, but I’m happy I got to meet you, Wheein. I had no idea I had such a cute neighbour.”

This time, Wheein’s cheeks burned. She stiffened, unsure how to reply to such a bold comment. “Me too,” she said shyly. It wasn’t at all what she had planned to say—those two words containing far more honesty than she was used to giving up, but the widening grin on Hyejin’s face was almost worth it.

“So,” Hyejin said, biting her lip thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t want you to worry about your cat on my balcony again, but I don’t really have any other excuse to see you again. So, um, would you...be interested in hanging out?”

Wheein stared at the way her teeth tugged at her lip. This was too good to be true. She tore her gaze away to look at her cat. Surely, Ggomo’s stupidity had knocked her into such a stupor that she was dreaming all of this up.

Hyejin rubbed the back of her neck, her cheeks pink as she took one more plunge. “Dinner, maybe?”

Wheein smiled. “Dinner...would be wonderful.”

Notes: This story was inspired by the very real story of my friend and her dumb cat. Basically 90% of the story was more or less what happened. Unfortunately, she didn't end up with a date, but it was such an amazing story that I HAD to write it as a fic. It's just too adorable to resist, you guys.