Variations on Domestic Violence
It’s a serious subject, and I don’t mean to take anything away from that, but this has been four days of varying degrees of trouble, negative and positive, really. In the first place, Thursday night I’d had it with our neighbor’s incessant doof-doof party music after nine p.m. and (again) rang the cops to make a noise complaint. I feel a little bad about it now, because at about the same time the patrolman showed up, Party Girl had switched off, on her way out. The music had all been getting-in-the-mood tunes and only for the forty-five minutes it took her to complete her preparations. If I’d known, I suppose I might have endured, but that’s not something I could have known without knocking on her door to ask her to shut or turn it down, a step I’ve given up taking. All we ever hear are excuses or denials, so cops was the best obvious step. Unfortunately for her, she took it in bad part and started cursing and giving the cop attitude and, when he refused to stop writing the summons and insisted on getting her name, she started kicking and shoving him out of her door. Bad move: it’s called assaulting an officer, and he called it in. Within a minute or two, we had six or seven cops hauling her off to the station, pretty nearly carrying her off bodily while she freaked out, screaming her head off in the hall, crying, pleading, arguing, and just generally beside herself. All we wanted was a little peace and quiet for once, and if she’d just taken the ticket, she’d have made it to her party. Instead she ended up in the psych ward for an evaluation of her mental status, followed by a few hours at the station house being booked. She didn’t end up held overnight, but she’s headed for court. At least the music stopped.

After all that drama, however, we then proceeded on Saturday to inflict further violence upon our home, by adopting two six-month-old kitten brothers from the Cat Protection Society, in Newtown. One, a pretty charcoal tabby, is a scaredy cat, spending an awful lot of time behind the sofa, while the other, more outgoing, black-and-white formal-dress cat, marches around the apartment purring his head off or chasing everything within and outside immediate reach that looks like it might be a mouse, including house plants and items of furniture. My hands sting from the minor scratches and bites. At least they’re not disco fans.