This week a series of annoyances managed to all roll out one after another, forcing me to bring out my inner Hulk—albeit, the kinder, gentler Hulk.
About two weeks ago, I got new neighbors: A young couple with two young children, an infant and a four-year-old. They also have a cat with three kittens, and they’re trying to push the orange one on me. (Not gonna happen. Tig and Gracie hate other cats, and at the age of ten, I think it’s unfair to them to bring a stranger in the house.) But here’s the thing: Their four-year-old has been bothering me incessantly. She knocks on my patio door to tell me Tig wants to come in. Meantime, he was sound asleep on the patio until she came by to bother him, whereupon he woke up and frantically tried to get inside to get away from her. She knocks on my patio door to tell me she’s wearing a new shirt. She waves at me through the kitchen window while I’m preparing dinner, because my window looks out on my patio and she is in my backyard area, because she is not, apparently, being watched very carefully by her mother. And to top it all off, her mother knocks on my front door to tell me Tig wants to come in, and I have to explain to her that no, he doesn’t, he wants to sit on my porch and not be bothered, and that he knows how to let me know when he wants in. If he can’t get me to hear him scratching on the door, he will either yowl until I hear him, or come around to the patio door and get my attention that way. Really. I’ve been living here for five years, and my cats are thoroughly adapted to their environment.
Then, for the past week or so, we have the added annoyance of my cats misbehaving. Tig kept waking me up at 5 a.m. by yowling at me to get up and pay attention to him. This happened night after night until I finally woke up enough to start throwing shoes at him. I never hit him. I throw them in his general direction, and he gets the message. So it took two nights of throwing my slippers—no, three nights. He finally stopped waking me up. Now it’s Gracie’s turn. She’s discovered that I work from home now, so that means I can pay attention to her 24/7. Well, uh, no. She’s been yowling at me to come pet her upstairs. She’s been doing this every couple of hours. Two days ago, I got fed up with all of her noise and went to the foot of the stairs and had words with her. She sat on landing at the top of the stairs, eyes growing wide, and listened. She also got the message. I heard a yowl just now as I was writing this post, and yelled, “Gracie!” in super-stern voice, and she stopped.
Finally, yesterday, neighbor child knocks on my patio door—the blinds are closed—in midafternoon. Tig is asleep in the corner, ignoring her. She grabs her shirt and tells me that she’s wearing her new teddy bear shirt.
“What did I tell you about bothering me while I’m working?” I asked.
“But I’m wearing my new teddy bear shirt!”
“Briana, GO!” I said. I pointed. I never point. But she was really pissing me off.
She took off running.
I have not been bothered since.
Ahhhh. That sound you hear is the sound of me getting my privacy and control back.
This time next year, I hope to be working from my own townhouse. I’m going to install a fence.
A big one.
Update: She crossed the line. She squirted Tig with a water bottle. And in order to do this, she had to sneak onto my patio—all the way onto my patio—and get him while he slept in the corner near the door. She did. But I saw the tail end of it. I went next door and told her mother to keep that child away from me, my patio, and my cat. I was not nice. I was not patient. And I wasn’t accepting excuses.
I do not want that brat anywhere near me or mine again.
