This is a new weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 20 years that we've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 20 years here in a weekly blog post.
This week's post is all about the neighborhood animals.
We had a new guy and his wife move in back in April and they have two dogs but we didn't know they had 2 dogs because we hadn't seen them. One morning one of the dogs was sitting outside in our courtyard. We knocked on a few of the doors to see if anyone knew who she belonged to and Ken knocked on his door but he didn't answer. So Ken brought her in our apartment because she looked scared and she's an older dog. It drives me nuts that so many people around here let their dogs run loose and get lost and they don't care.
This is the dog that was standing outside. She's really friendly but she walks slowly and has that older dog look in her eyes. They're cloudy like she has cataracts. At first I thought she was a stray because she didn't look groomed at all. But when we let her outside to go to the bathroom she went right over to my neighbors door. We knocked on his door for over an hour and when he finally opened the door he said she wasn't his dog it was his wifes and he didn't even know she was outside. Since then they have let the 2 dogs out without a leash at least a dozen times and I've had her in my apartment one other time when he forgot she was outside and went to sleep. This guy is a total ass. The wife seems to care for her dogs but he watches the dogs during the day while she's at work and too often he forgets they are outside. I told her twice and she said thanked us for bringing the dog inside until he could get it.
We've brought in other dogs over the years when idiotic neighbors left them outside. This is Jessica and my dog Falcor. She would get let outside and they would call for her a little while later but if she didn't come back right away and they had somewhere to go, they would just leave her outside and leave. We ended up bringing her inside several times when they were gone for a long time until they came back.
The dog on the couch was another neighbors dog that would be let out and forgotten because the owner was on heroine (she told me herself) and she would fall asleep. So if we saw the dog outside we would bring her inside until the owner came looking for her.
One day this little rabbit hopped right up to Ken in our alley. He was so friendly and my daughter loved him.
We were going to keep him but my daughter ended up being really badly allergic to him. So we found a family who had 2 other rabbits and a big back yard and two big rabbit hutches for them and gave the rabbit to them. He was happy because he had a big yard to play in with 2 other rabbits.
This dog ran up to me when I was out checking the mail. She had a collar on thankfully and when I called the number on it the woman said it was her ex husband's dog and she was surprised the phone number on the collar was hers. So she took my number down and called her ex who happened to live at the end of my block. He called me and he came to get his dog. Her name was Tiffy.
One morning I heard a noise at my door. I opened the door and saw this cat pawing my door wanting to come in. I found out a few minutes later that this cat and another cat that used to come over all the time belonged to a neighbor that lived 2 doors down from me. They would let the cats come and go as they pleased and they wanted to come for a visit all the time.
This was their other cat who would sit in front of my door and meow until someone came out to pet her. Then she would walk 2 door down and go back home.
Back in 2010 my daughter lived about 4 blocks away and as she was walking over to see us, this homeless dog followed her to my house. He was really friendly but was really malnourished, had matted fur and had an small injury to his leg. So I called animal control to come get him. Hopefully he had a chip or was adopted. Poor thing was in bad shape.
There were a lot more stray dogs and cats that we found over the years but I didn't take pictures of. The most memorable one was when my daughter found a box that had 3 newborn kittens in it and the mother cat. I called the shelter to come get them because my daughter is allergic to cats really badly so we couldn't keep them. My daughter said she saw some guy in a truck drop the box off in the parking lot and drive off so she brought it home.
A lot of people have said that I should call animal control on these people who leave their animals outside and forget about them. But they do take care of them otherwise and since we don't have a no kill shelter here I really don't want to call animal control unless I absolutely have to. Most of these people do care for their pets, they're just kinda stupid.
So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.