Okay, the background to the kitten incident. Now, sometimes when I’ve recovered a house, the client will ask me to come back on a regular basis to maintain order. Sometimes they just need the big tasks done, like mopping the floor that used to be hidden. Sometimes the mess does start creeping back. But in this case, the family seemed to do absolutely nothing for themselves. Every Saturday evening, I would leave a magazine ad. Every Saturday morning, I would return to an episode of Cops. But I was getting paid, and I liked them, so I cheerfully shoveled.
After a little over a year, the husband left. I don’t know how much, if at all, the housekeeping situation had to do with it. The wife starts drinking (she’d been a sober alcoholic when this started). The house falls into even further disarray because the kids are being more rambunctious. I can no longer get it all done in eight hours. (Bear in mind, this was long enough ago that $9 was worth more. For one thing, gas was cheaper.) Outstanding features are dry cereal freaking everywhere, mats of clothes in the upstairs hallway, and paper plates of food in the living room, often precariously balanced.
Mom starts bringing in her women friends to drink and smoke far in to the night. One stray woman starts living in the garage. The older daughter offers to help me clean, and says she wishes she lived somewhere else. I happen to know she’s close with her grandmother, who lives a bus ride away, and ask if living there would require changing schools. She researches the matter, announces her intention to mom, and leaves. The younger girl and even younger boy take over her room as a second playroom (they already had one).
One day, mom’s sister is there instead of mom. She also offers to help, and takes over the garbage bag. She puts in handfuls of crud, and I notice that among the cereal puffs and crumpled tissues are toy pieces and playing cards.
Me: B-but you can’t do that.
Her: It’s just garbage.
Me: But there are Lego bits in there. And jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Her: So? You think they’ll notice?
Me: Well, but I just can’t throw away stuff. It’s not mine.
Her: I paid [mom]'s rent this month. I can throw away anything I want.
Me: …okay.
Her: …
…Not mad at you.
Me: I know.
So it was a few weeks after that that I found the kitten. Like I said in the other thread, I lifted up a section of newspaper and found it lying there. I’ll never know exactly how it died, but the bottom line was, someone must have seen it was dead, and chose to simply drop the classified section over it instead of…I mean, they could have put it in one of the ten thousand grocery bags blanketing the landscape. And then it would have stayed there until I arrived, but even that’s more sanitary, and less disturbing.
And would you believe, I kept the job. Because I cared about those kids, clueless as they were. I can’t blame them for following their mother’s example, and I wanted to be a good example for them. But it was only a few weeks later that mom decided to move up north, and I have zero idea what happened to them up there.
