You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Opening the door to your home and being over come by the pungent stench of urine.
The scent is hopefully not human and most likely feline. But still, it is the unmistakable scent of ammonia. My eyes water from the toxic wave – something so noxious, it reminds me of a mix of vinegar and Mr Clean. It is repulsive to the senses.
The sun is all ready blazing on this July Saturday. The temperature is soaring into the mid 90’s. As I step into my rental, home I feel a current of air conditioning. I am not only happy for the cooler temperature, I’m glad that the air conditioner unit is still working.
As I step inside I am choking on cat hair and dust. You can see it on the banister, on the counter on the floor boards.
It is nauseating. How do people live like this? I think to myself.
This is my rental home and the tenants have just moved out.
The carpet is stained as if a sled team of Huskies have all given birth in the living room.
There are splotches so big, so irregular, only a psychiatrist could appreciate their random meaning.
I find myself growing sad and angry, emotions churning like a turbulent sea.
I see dings in the wall and scrapes down the paint. I see blinds that are crimped and windows that are cracked.
The mantel is stained with soot, from a fire that apparently got out of the fire place.
The storm doors are off their hinges and they don’t close unless you pull upward and jerk them sternly like an errant Dachshund on a morning walk.
Why I think to myself.
The home I gave them was bright and airy. I steam cleaned the carpets and put a fresh coat of paint on everything.
I put in a new dishwasher and made sure things worked.
Now it’s a 2,200 square foot cat box.
The refrigerator is layered in goo. Somehow there is cat hair in the crisper drawer and some form of meat scum on a shelf.
The microwave is crusted goop. Oh and it doesn’t work anymore. I guess it was old.
There is a layer of sugar all along the pantry floor followed by a line of a thousand diabetic ants.
I go into the garage that is filled like a trash can. Garbage is everywhere. The tenants moved out and what they couldn’t take they dumped in the garage. It is a nightmare. There are boxes and hoola hoops and musty clothes. It looks like a Salvation Army bus rolled over on the interstate and what exploded was left in my garage.
I look at the front of the house.
The once happy little home is sad. The blinds are drawn, closed off from all outside light.
The people that lived in this house lived like they were in the witness protection program.
A neighbor will come up to me later and say “I couldn’t pick them out of a line up.”
I look at the grass. It is shin high and filled with weeds. Where the grass ends and the sidewalk begins is impossible to determine thanks to the crab grass comb-over that flows from the lawn onto the street.
There are weeds in the flower garden as big as the plants they are encroaching, choking them like Jack the Ripper working the docks in merry ole England.
The hedges on the side of the house are 5 feet too high, their branches trying to grow through the bricks above the air conditioning unit, which is buried under a rain forest of neglect.
There are plants growing up the side of the house like the ivy at Wrigley Field.
Why has it come to this? Does nobody have any pride?
I decide that I have to compartmentalize. Just because they didn’t care about the little house doesn’t mean I don’t care about the little house.
I decide I will tackle one hideous task at a time.
I begin outside because there is fresh air outside that is growing hotter by the minute. I choose to work outside because I know that I can make a dent in the abysmal eye sore that is before me. I will toil outside because I want to send my neighbors a message that it’s going to be ok?
For the last 7 months, the people that have lived here have let the home slide like the Greek economy.
I want my house to be a smiling face in the neighborhood. I want people to pull up and say, “pride of ownership”, somebody here cares.
Right now this house says “I don’t give a damn.”
But that is about to change.
So long Fourth of July weekend, hello cat hair hell.
And that is crazy.