Cats.

In terms of my experience with cats, the first several years of my life where rather negative. My father has always been opposed to the feline friends so many of us have grown fond of. Every time that I interacted with a cat when I was younger, I was oblivious to the fact that animals absolutely feed off of our emotions and react to us accordingly. Therefore, since I was always nervous that cats wouldn't like me or would attack me, they almost always lived up to those expectations.

You know what I find interesting? It's so rare that you encounter a wonderful person with a shitty pet. Just as interesting, you rarely see a fantastic animal who belongs to a shitty person. You know why? Animals do feed off of our habits and emotions. That's why my cat adores laying on the couch all day and her number one complaint is only getting about 110% of her daily recommended nutrition.

Many of you people are quite familiar with the twist and turns my life has taken. One thing I don't regularly mention is the weird span of time between living in Richland and living in Seattle, when I lived in Bellevue.

It was a Tuesday at my parent's house and I was looking for places to live in Seattle. My Aunt Traci texted me and informed me that Taco Tuesday was a thing at Ty's in West Richland. Knowing that I had a small amount of remaining time in the Tri Cities and that I really enjoy hanging with the Chapman crew, I quickly left and found myself eating some tacos and having a few glasses of beer. While it was a very nice taco Tuesday, what truly made the experience memorable was the fact that I had received a response from my Housing Wanted post on Craigslist in Seattle. At first I received a three page text about the place that was being offered including prices, personality style, and allowing of cats.

He also mentioned specifically that rent was a fixed price, and included all utilities.

Quite a bit took place between Tacos and moving to Bellevue. We'll skip that now.

Finally I was moved into this house in Bellevue. The owner of the house was named Lynn, a 50 year old guy. My cat was welcome so long as she was house trained and could get along with the house owner's dog.

The first hint I should have taken was when the owner of the house was helping me put a bed in my room. He warned me to watch out for used needles. I assumed he was joking, naturally. But he met my laughter with a serious tone which indicated that an individual who abused heroin had lived in this room prior to me. As we were moving a mattress up from the garage, I questioned why we couldn't use the more logically sized one next to the one we were carrying. He answered that his friend had died on that mattress and that he wasn't ready for others to sleep on it.

Unfortunately about three days before any of those events, he had cashed the check I gave him for $1400.

Things went alright for a short period following this. I figured maybe I had lucked out and he had one horrible tenant before.

Suddenly I come home from a long day of driving, and my landlord, the other tenant, and two friends are sitting around the living room table snorting cocaine.

To be honest, I didn't really give a shit. It was a red flag, for sure, but I had only paid for two rents on a month to month verbal agreement. So I figured if this was the worst of it things would be alright.

At this point I was rather lonely. I didn't know anyone in Bellevue and wasn't thrilled with the prospect of hanging out with the people I lived with.

Fast forward another week or so, and I come home to the Bellevue house with a trio of unfamiliar cars parked outside the house.

I walk in to find a group of guys I've never seen before. A box of sweet tarts lay spread across the table in front of them.

I had introduced myself and shaken hands with most of them before my realization that a lot of the tablets on the table were not sweet tarts, they were pills of some sort being placed into sweet tart boxes so as to cover suspicion.

It was that moment that I realized I was in a bit over my head with where I had chosen to live. Lucky for me, it didn't paralyze me socially. Instead I offered the people some of the 18 pack of beer I'd recently purchased. Of course, I had the option of saying "HEY guise drugs r bad stop it." I don't see an alternative universe where I had said that and things proceeded better than they had.

This ends part 1 of this story.

A few weeks in to living at the Bellevue house Lynn rented the downstairs portion out to a guy who he thought was a cocaine dealer. He didn't see this as an issue as long as the guy paid rent.

As I said before, I was pretty lonely by this point. So when I went downstairs to check my laundry to find a young lady hanging out by herself in the basement, I was somewhat excited at the prospect of a person to hang out with.

We chatted for a bit and eventually I went to check my laundry, and discovered what I couldn't quite describe, but knew to me some form of hard drugs. By this time I had had a few of the beers I originally shared with the opiate salesman (I never thought I would string anything like that sentence together) and I ask her what it is. Turns out she'd been switching back and forth between smoking meth and heroin. At this point the idea of judgemental had long been gone from me, and I chose to ask her a few questions about it rather than immediately dismiss her. She was still at an interesting point where she was clearly addicted to certain substances, yet still convinced herself that she was living in an ideal situation.

A few hours later I exchanged words the the guy who rented the downstairs area (the supposed cocaine dealer) and discover the majority of his income actually comes from taking a percentage of prostitution sales of women he knows. You read that correctly. The guy living downstairs wasn't actually a coke dealer, he was a pimp.

By now we're a little a month into my two months of payment. I inform Lynn that I will be moving out when my rent is up.

Lynn immediately throws a childish fit. The agreement we had was that I would inform him 30 days prior to moving out. Despite the fact I told him 33 days before moving out, he was pissed. I asked if he meant 30 days before not paying rent, to which he said yes. I then reminded him that I had already paid for my rent for the second month, and that he was actually asking for 60 days notice.

The 50 year old man reacted like a 5 year child. He began yelling and told me to leave immediately.

So I retreated to the local safeway to give him time to calm down. He tells me that he will refund me the 700 dollars for the second month of rent so long as I'm out in 3 days. He said he will give me 3 days, like I gave him 3 days, and that a new guy is coming to check out my room soon so I best be ready.

I call his bluff. I tell him to show me the money and I'll be out by day's end.

A few hours pass, and he sends me a long message about the asshole that canceled on him to view my room, and how he'd rather me just stay there for now anyway.

Luckily by about this time, I had my next living space lined up, and I had the option of moving in at almost any time.

Remember when I said that he included utilities? Well,  when I think utilities nowadays, I think of power, water/sewage, garbage, and internet. Lynn's idea of utilities meant water/sewage, and power outlets which consisted solely of two prong outlets. The kicker was he had real trouble keeping up with the power bill, so the power went out for days at a time here and there.

So at this point I've written off the experience entirely as a stupid bump between Richland and Seattle.

Finally the day comes where I move the majority of my shit from the shitty Bellevue house to my new pad in north Seattle.

The thing is, by this time, due to the lack of a trash service, I've built up a small wall of trash in my room. Naturally, I move my possessions, not including my trash. This occurred on the 15th of July, whereas my agreement to move out of the Bellevue house landed on August 3rd.

So essentially what happens is this: I move out on Thursday, tell Lynn I'll be back on Monday to take care of the trash, and on Saturday, Lynn texts me.

I've chosen not to post the screen shot of the text. The threats from his end made certain people I showed them to originally very uncomfortable, despite my lack of concern. I don't wish to spread that further, so just know he essentially said that if I came back to deal with the trash as I discussed, I would have been with a pistol in my face.

That was several months ago and my living situation is now lovely.