Cats.

There's this house down the road from me with loads of cats. When I was younger, I would spend hours trying to coax one of the cats out from under a hedge or a car so that I could pet it. They had names, but I never learnt them, so I made up names for them in my head and even today, I don't know their given names. 

They were, however, not looked after by a crazy cat lady. Their 'owner', for lack of a better word, was a couple who had no children. However, next door there did live a crazy cat lady (without the cats). She was crazy in the typical sense. She never seemed to leave the house, for neither I, nor anyone else ever saw her, except through the gaps between her lace curtains. She used to scream at nothing and noone in particular for hours. And, but for the fact that there was no reply, one would think she was having an argument. It did seem as if she was answering someone and not just screaming at the wall. Not that I could tell from her words, she was screaming in some language I didn't know nor recognise. 

Her very large t.v. was always playing, night and day. You could hear it from the street when the windows were open -which they usually were- and she was quiet -which she rarely was. 

I always thought she lived alone, but I got into a conversation with a working man of about forty one day when I was petting a cat outside cat heaven (which is what my sister and I called the house with all the cats) and it turned out he rented the back of the house. We talked about how the lady was crazy and I wondered why he didn't move out. He told me the rent was cheap and I could tell from his accent and that beaten-down look that he wasn't from around here. I guess living with a crazy lady was worth it to live in this neighbourhood. He told me that she had had a husband once, but that he had died and that was who she was screaming at.