Fiction: Lucky’s sister dies unexpectedly, and all of a sudden her cat starts speaking to him

The biggest electronics store in the neighbourhood is on the corner of two busy streets, tucked away inside a rundown shopping complex where the eighties live on. In this long, windowless space, under bright white lights, it is forever and never night or day, and the piped music is a gentle refusal to move on from simpler times. Backed by an instrumental version of Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You”, big bold signs (“Big Discounts! Big Value! Welcome to Big Electronics!”) usher Lucky and Dinah towards the escalators in the middle of the building, past the rows of shops offering remittance services, foot massages, feng shui readings, exorcisms, and banana cake.

“Is this it?”

“Yup.”

The nondescript entrance is the same pair of heavy aluminium-framed doors that Lucky remembers from every time he’s been to the store in the last thirty-ish years. His father always said the doors were a good tactic. You see doors like these and you don’t think to yourself that this is a fancy sort of store; you see doors like these and you think you’re going to get a good deal.

Lucky walks in thinking he’s going to get a good deal.

An hour later, he is pacing the television section while Dinah grits her teeth. He’s no longer thinking he’s going to get a good deal – he’s wondering how televisions have come to be so complicated. Also, everything seems to be a smart TV, and he’s unsure if Coconut will be able to cope. She’s a smart cat but is she that smart? There’s also the question of the remote controls—can her paws cope with these teeny tiny buttons?

“What’s the problem, Lucky? If you want, we can go to another store . . .”

Lucky thrusts a sleek white remote control at Dinah. “Look – do you think this is too small for Coconut? Why are they making these things so damn tiny?”

Dinah stares. Okay. She can do this. Carefully, keeping her tone light, she ventures, “Coconut needs to use the remote control?”

To her horror, the answer is yes, because the cat needs to be able to turn on the television by itself. In fact, the television is for the cat. Well, he did say in his text earlier that he needed to get a present for Coconut, but she hadn’t connected this with his wanting to go to Big Electronics and get a new television. Amazed, she only half-listens as Lucky and the store manager, who’s finally decided it’s time to close the sale, talk about the best kind of screens for watching nature documentaries. Should she call Shawn? Aunty Dolly? But what would she say? What can they really do? What can anyone?

Lucky stares at the mountain on the television screen closest to him. From a distance, it’s lush and green, and as the camera moves closer and over it, the ridges of a crater come into view and then a gleaming, turquoise lake. The colours are nuanced and life-like, none of the weird lurid hues of some of the other models. Lucky has to stop himself from trying to reach out and touch the water. This is it. This is our TV.

“That’s Mount Rinjani, in Indonesia. Beautiful!”

Reluctantly, Lucky turns away from the screen to look at the store manager. “Ah. Have you been?”

The store manager sighs. “No. Would be nice, right, to see a proper mountain? Not like Bukit Timah Hill.”

Lucky rolls his eyes, nodding.

The excursion last week up that very hill had been a massive failure. Incensed by the cat lady’s insinuation that he, Lucky Lee, couldn’t take care of a cat, he’d announced to Coconut that he was taking her to see a dwarf mountain.

“Dwarf mountain?”

Lucky explained to his sceptic cat (his scepticat!) that dwarf mountains weren’t the same level of cool as a regular mountain, but they were supposed to be pretty nice

“Supposed to be? You’ve never been?”

“Super long ago, Coconut.” Probably a school trip, and he probably left as soon as he could and erased the memory. Lucky sighed. The things he did for Coconut! He made a mental note to go visit the cat lady soon and tell her he took his cat up Bukit Timah Hill. How many people can say that?

He prepared snacks – curry puffs for himself, cat treats for Coconut – and put everything in a basket together with Coconut herself, and off they went in a cab to the start of one of the many trails marked on Google Maps. What a walk it was to the summit! It wasn’t even nine yet but it was hot. The tarmac path teemed with elderly women in visors on their morning walk and over them hung a great cloud of citronella from all the insect repellent. Lucky, on the other hand, having brought no repellent, was nearly eaten alive by mosquitoes and relentlessly pursued by other roving insects.

All this, for nothing. The little cat was openly scornful (“The sign over there says this is a hill, Lucky”), there was no view to speak of (“What are we supposed to see, Lucky?”), and he lost a curry puff to a wasp (he wasn’t sure if wasps ate curry puffs but he was sure that one was eyeing his so he threw one at it). Forty-five minutes after they arrived, they were on their way back to the cafe.

Coconut sulked the entire day, upset about the dwarf mountain that wasn’t a mountain at all. Lucky spent the entire day contrite, wondering why he had ever imagined that Bukit Timah Hill would pass for a mountain, even a dwarf one, even to a cat.

Excerpted with permission from Deplorable Conversations with Cats and Other Distractions, Yeoh Jo-Ann, Penguin South East Asia.