Bio

Lost Kitten

Before he started spittin’, Adam ran wild through the streets of his East end Toronto neighbourhood, Dundas, cultivating his rep as an evil, reckless prankster.

After being refused TTC service multiple times for not packing his grade 9 student card, Adam began throwing 7-11 Big Gulps of urine at streetcar drivers, then biking off into the sunset, emitting a high-pitched cackle.

Affectionately referred to by his peers as the “Piss-Bomb Bandit,” the piss-bombings came to an abrupt end one hot May night in ’97, when a freshly-soaked streetcar driver rang his emergency alarm, ordered all his passengers off, calling both the po-po, and TTC security.

Though Adam managed to disappear into the shadows, as usual, he decided to put his piss-bombing ways behind him, feeling they had simply brought “too much heat, for no real reward besides my boys’ amusement.”

Coincidentally, on June 1st, 1997, the TTC launched their new “Special Constables” unit, authorized by the Toronto Police Services Boards, responsible for “ensuring the safety and security of all TTC employees.”

However, on February 1, 2011, the “Special Constables” division changed their name to, simply, the “Transit Enforcement Unit.” Adam believes this change was made “Hundred percent purely outta embarrassment,” for after 14 years without any leads on the elusive Piss-Bomb Bandit, they finally “realized they weren’t so special, after all.”

Shortly after the piss-bomb heat died down, Adam switched his focus to money-making schemes, evolving into the “Blockbuster Bandit.” This moniker derived from his trademark of placing pop can tabs inside the lock of the boys’ change room door (causing it to remain slightly open, despite looking closed), then returning to rifle through unattended backpacks, and teef Blockbuster Video membership cards out students’ wallets.

The B.B.B. would then fraudulently rent typically 10-12 games on his victim’s account, then flip them on the black market.

In total, he is alleged to have “rented” over 100 games for Nintendo 64/PlayStation 1 on nine different accounts, before being caught on camera and identified by a fellow student, leading to the ignominious downfall of the BlockBuster Bandit.

After an unsettling run-in with the po-po, a third straight suspension from his disgruntled high school principal, and a threat from his Jewish mother to ship him off to boarding school if he didn’t “straight up and fly right,” Adam began seeking new outlets for his chronic frustration, and creative energy. Though he found solace and discipline in sports such as rugby and wrestling, he finally discovered his true release in the act of creative writing.

Prankster 2 Rapper

In 1999, “MC Wildcat” released his debut cassette tape, “Pulling More Than Pranks,” produced by his blind DJ, “Kevy K.”

Then under the tutelage of two beat-making high-school buddies, Wildcat went on to drop nine independent rap albums between 2000-2008, then returned in 2010 with the street classic, “Cleaning Out the Squirrel’s Den.”

Throughout his evolution as a rapper, Wildcat recognized his life had taken  new direction, yet still felt his prankster legacy needed closure. So after streaking two Leaside Select League baseball games in Howard Talbot Park, a Toronto Maple Leafs inter-county ball game in Christie Pits, and a Wal-Mart parking lot in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Wildcat felt ready for the major leagues.

In August 2004, he executed his farewell prank by streaking Toronto’s Skydome, during a baseball game between the Blue Jays and Baltimore Orioles (battle of the birds, if you will).

By all accounts, Wildcat set a record for the longest streak in professional sports history, running from the first base line to just past center field, before being swarmed and apprehended by the Blue Jays grounds-crew, and Skydome security.

After being assigned a court date for “indecent exposure” and “committing an act of mischief in a public setting,” Wildcat’s court case miraculously fell through the cracks.

After sitting in the back of a City Hall courtroom for hours, waiting for the judge to summon him to the stand, Wildcat’s name was never called. He trotted out that courtroom scot-free, and the incident has never since been brought up by police, despite frequent run-ins for biking infractions, and other petty hassles.

Wildcat stated his lack of punishment for streaking the Skydome, “Proved to me the gods got a sense of humour.” Though he also received a lifetime ban from entering the Skydome premises, since it was re-branded the “Rogers Centre” in 2005, he considers this a legal loophole, and feels free to come and go as he pleases.

Cat has since attended many Blue Jays games without incident, and thus far resisted his urge to run naked on the field, once more.

Creative Struggles

Despite Wildcat making a conscious attempt to channel his energies constructively for most his adult life, this effort has largely gone unrewarded. Though Cat’s creative projects have been rejected on nearly every level, he simply charges it to the price of “doin’ sumpin’ different, in a game that rejects originality and rewards conformity.”

In 2003, upon completing York University’s “Introduction to Creative Writing” course, Cat applied to major in their Creative Writing program, and was rejected without explanation. He attributed this to York’s criteria being “based more on internal politics, than pen game,” as he felt they were searching for “flowery, literary flakes,” concluding that his style was simply “too raw, too street, basically just too damn wild for them snooty twits.”

Cat eventually transferred to York’s Glendon campus and majored in English, but flunked out his final year, due to having landed a part-time job as a condo security guard, and getting “swallowed up by the zombie grind.”

“I was working midnight till 8 am every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and just got stuck in this cycle of crashing out from like 10 am till 4 or 5 every day, then by the time I’d woke up, I’d slept through every class. So I hardly showed up for no classes that year, and pretty much bombed every single one.”

In 2008, Wildcat applied for Humber College’s Creative Writing Graduate program, and much to his surprise, was accepted.

During this program he worked closely with a mentor, who gave Cat constructive feedback on his novel, “The Misadventures of Howie Inwood.”

After graduating, Cat’s mentor graciously offered that once Cat revised his novel based on the feedback he’d received, he could re-submit it to him, and if he felt was publishable would recommend it for publishing through Humber’s program.

Cat spent two and a half years revising this damn thing, then sent it back to his mentor upon completion, only to have him decide it still wasn’t ready to drop. Wildcat handled this disappointment by embarking on a drunken, late-night rampage through Leaside (a prosperous, white neighbourhood outside of Dundas), smashing several stranger’s car windshields, house windows, and uprooting many a garden.

After calming down about a year later, Wildcat and a childhood friend turned filmmaker began collaboration on the documentary, “Pulling More Than Pranks: The Rise of MC Wildcat.”

Despite a sold-out premiere and glowing reviews, the film was ultimately rejected from the Hot Docs Film Festival, largely because of it’s length.

At roughly 45 minutes, the film was classified as a “medium-length short,” meaning it ran significantly longer than a short (15-20 min), yet significantly shorter than a feature length (90-120 min).

And due to some rule of always screening two films of the same length simultaneously in two different theaters, the film was ultimately shit-canned, simply cuz Hot Docs didn’t have no next “medium length short” to co-screen it with.

After several more drunken, late-night smash-fests, Cat once again settled down, and found himself in the tough, yet familiar position of having to re-assess his career path.

Pushing Forward

Despite 16 years of neighbourhood street cred, Wildcat feels his career has largely been perceived as a joke gone to far, and remains hungry for respect in the game.

His next move is dropping his “Claw & Scramble” mixtape, tentatively scheduled for spring, 2016.

Wildcat has also completed a collection of inter-twined, semi-autobiographical short stories, “Wildcat Prowls the Urban Jungle,” currently being considered by a Toronto publisher.

Though no one can quite predict what Wildcat’s future holds, all signs point to one more wild ride. 

To quote Wildcat’s producer, Star, “The Cat just…sometimes marches to his own off-rhythm drum, ya know?”