Oddly enough, I was just having a conversation about whether we all (all of us bloggers) write as insurance against memory or because we have an audience in mind or what. And this particular entry of mine is definitely insurance against memory. So - warning! - this is not written for you all (but feel free to read it anyway, since it's on the internet and all).

It's sort of like that time I was in Indonesia and got my whole salary stolen. As I was writing, I was fully aware that I was whining and not writing in a manner that would hold anyone's interest, but I wanted to get it down so I wouldn't forget how angry I am capable of becoming. I always forget because I don't get very angry often, and I am fooled into thinking I'm not naturally a violently angry person, that I don't get so completely consumed by it that sometimes I almost pass out from the pressure inside my skull.

But I am, and I do. Although the Indonesia entry didn't reflect that. I was in such an alien environment, and so terrified of acting like a spoiled American around all the people living in poverty that I didn't dare elaborate on how angry I was - I didn't even dare FEEL how angry I was.

Yesterday Dan and I received a letter in the mail notifying us that we would not be allowed to re-lease our apartment, that we were required to move out at the end of our term. There was no reason given, but we know what the reason is, and we know why she ('she' being the owner of the property management company, who has a very distinctive idiot-style of writing where she thinks if she conjugates a verb in different ways it counts as saying something different) doesn't want to say what the reason is. It's because she would look like an idiot, saying 'The reason for our decision is that those meanies made me sign a copy of their move-in checklist so it would be on record that I received it. Also, they asked if they could get a cat when we told them they could at the lease signing and when it says clearly on the lease that cats are allowed with permission. How rude! And after that, you know what they did? They accused me of going back on my word, which is totally true! And then - this is the crowning point of it all, where I definitely knew I wouldn't want those assholes renting my property - they wrote me an email saying they disagreed with my conclusion but they were going to drop the matter and not get a cat because they loved living in this apartment so much! That's when I KNEW I wanted to kick them out. Also, they always pay their rent on time, take care of their place, and don't bother the other tenants - and we definitely can't have THAT going on in one of our properties!'

There's only one type of person that makes me spitting mad, this mad, so mad that I get an instant migraine and would, in a second, if faced with this person and a loaded gun, pull the trigger. That type of person is stupid, but conniving. This type of person will go out of their way to hurt others as badly as possible, even when it's not in the best interests of, say, their business. This type of person, when offended, never gets over it, never tries to resolve it, and thinks only of exercising power over the offender until (s)he feels better. They think only of 'winning'.

I offended our property management company's owner inadvertently at the lease signing. I'm still not sure quite how I did it. I think she was affronted by the request that she sign off on receiving a copy of our move-in checklist. She said, 'Just trust me, I received it. I'm standing here telling you I received it.' But our apartment was in terrible condition when we moved in and we had noted all of it down on the checklist and we wanted to make absolutely sure that it was ON PAPER that we had notified them of the condition within three business days, because there was a clause on the lease saying that if we didn't do that, we would be held responsible for any damage when we moved out.

I didn't want them to be able to say we hadn't turned it in, and charge us thousands of dollars upon move-out (this has happened to me before) so I asked for a signature. She was immediately enraged. Why? Because I had taken control? Because I had seen through the plan of the company to get around paying back security deposits? Who knows? After that moment, she despised me. She flat-out refused to sign the paper, and only after Dan had sweet-talked her for a while did she finally - and angrily - sign it.

When I later tried to follow through on our plan - discussed at the lease signing - of getting a cat, by calling and asking for written permission, she dismissed me right out of hand, saying that we 'had no right' to get a cat, and that she 'never said' we could.

And even though we didn't get one, and we said we would drop the subject because of how much we liked living here, she chose to terminate our lease out of spite - not for any other reason but out of spite. She terminated it because we said how much we liked living here.

Revenge out of proportion to a perceived slight, flexing of power just for the hell of it - those are the type of people - perhaps the only type of people - that can get me irrational with rage.

I went into Petco yesterday to wait for Camille to buy catfood. As always in Petco there were two tiny sad cages by the front door with two large sad cats in them who could barely move. And as usual they were both turned so their butts faced the outside. They were probably sick of being poked through the bar by index fingers, maybe even scratched, and then abandoned. Nothing makes me sadder than housecats in cages, for some reason. I mean, I know why it makes me sad but I have no idea when or how it became the saddest thing possible. Formative experiences, I guess. I'm not being very romantic about it. Anyway, if I ever get arrested, it will be because I'll have been an undercover cat-freer for years, sneaking around under the cover of dark, jimmying the locks of pet stores everywhere and lifting the cats out with my special patented upside-down combination neck scratch calming lift.

(This lift is not to be attempted at home; serious scratching could occur, and has, if you don't have the cat at the precise degree of upside-down-ness required.)

Anyway, they'd be set free. I'm not a cat, so I don't know, but I think I'd rather live in the worst free conditions, alleys, scraps, backyards, fighting for territory with other cats, than live in a 2x3 foot cage in a Petco, or anywhere. Those shelters that require adopters to adopt two cats at once, that is so, so stupid. I haven't adopted cats from those shelters because of that rule. Almost everyone I know has chosen not to adopt cats from those shelters because of that rule. Sometimes you just can't adopt two cats. How can shelters set guidelines on adoption that result in less cats being adopted and more cats being put to death, and justify it at all?

Those would be released too. If I ever found out where Death Row for cats was, I'd be an outlaw immediately, probably so recklessly that I'd be caught. That breaking news that PETA was killing animals in the back of their van right outside animal shelters after they'd promise to make a 'good-faith effort' to find them homes severed any tenuous moral ties I ever had to PETA. I'm not sure how anything could be more antithetical to anything. Anger makes me not articulate.

Anyway, one of the cats, the one in the bottom cage, had his neck craned the tiniest bit so he could see out, but it wasn't immediately obvious that he was. I started to reach my finger out so he could smell it, but stopped. I read the sign on the outside of the cage, written, as always, in pleading language with smiley faces and cat cartoons and 'Adopt Me!' balloons all over it. Name: Arthur. Sex: Male, Spayed. Age: 4.5. Description: Sweet as can be!

Arthur peered at me over his shoulder, looking wary. I stood still, peering back. Unconsciously, I shuffled one of my feet, and, suddenly on guard, Arthur circled, crouched by the door of his cage, and sat tense and facing me, his nose between the bars. I shuffled again, and realized what had him so interested... the drawstrings on my cargo pants.

For the rest of the time I was waiting I walked back and forth, danced, dragged, in front of his cage, and the whole time he was entranced. I made sure not to let him know I was looking at him. I just let him, in his mind, stalk that mouse, that rabbit, that bug, around trees and under fences and through stalks of corn, his paws eventually batting through the bars of the cage, and, finally, let him catch it, bring it up onto the metal floor of his prison and gnaw a hole right through. He had such a grip on it that when Camille was finished and came to get me so that we could go, I had to kneel down and disentangle it from his claws, extended all the way out as they were. As I was replacing it around my ankle, my face level with his, he meowed at me. In my mind I had a flash of lifting him out of the cage, bringing him to the counter, adopting him, taking him home, hiding him from my landlord, letting him out to be friends with the cats from the other building and chase real mice, real bugs. It was a quick flash. My body killed it by walking out. But if I had endless money and endless time I would buy a giant fenced in mansion and as many cats as I could love.