The Cat and the Shat, Minus the Hat
I think I decided it was time to move out sometime between when the cat shit in my bed and when the police put our house under surveillance.

I haven't always had the best luck with flatmates, but until recently I've never had any real horror stories either. Even now, as I'm living in a virtual ghetto, among half-empty beer bottles, bread crusts tucked into the couch, smelly socks on the coffee table, cigarette butts in the bathtub and a kitchen littered with dirty plates, bowls and glasses, a few of which are growing exciting new breeds of mould, it's hard to convince myself that things are really that bad.

Then again, if children lived here, I'm pretty sure the government would come and take them away for health reasons.

I should have known what I was getting into from the start, but I was being optimistic. The day I moved in, all of my roommates were aware I was coming but as I unloaded my bags from a friend's car they were still assembling my bed, one they had switched with a bigger one from another room. Crusty cereal bowls sat around the living room and there was a certain odour in the air, a mix of dirty towels, stale milk and musty old carpet. I didn't remember the place smelling like that the first time I went to see it.

I was hoping that, being Sunday, it was all just left over from the weekend but I quickly found out that this was actually the house in neat mode.

I did my best. I washed dishes that weren't mine. I scrubbed the toilet with a brush that was there but had obviously never been used. I even attacked the bathtub with scouring powder, turning it from ashtray gray to a shade of white that might have been close to its original color.

Not only did no one thank me, but they didn't even seem to notice. So much for trying to lead by example.

Then, the cat shit. It was not our cat, but the cat of a friend of a flatmate. It seems the cat likes to take field trips (who takes a cat out with them?) and nobody bothers to watch it or even to close doors and keep it out of the rooms of people who are very allergic to cats which they would know if they had asked but they didn't because that's the kind of disrespectful, thoughtless clods they are.

I came home after class one evening. I went to my room. I smelled the shit. I hoped it was something else, but cat shit has a pretty distinctive odour. I looked everywhere. I checked under the bed, behind the dresser, in my shoes, but there was nothing. The house was driving me crazy but I knew I wasn't insane enough yet to be imagining it. There was shit to be found and I wasn't going to rest until I found it! A good decision in hindsight because had I gotten into bed without looking under the covers first I would have found myself in the middle of a really bad John Waters scene.

Yes, the mangy feline had crawled under my nice cozy sheets and left me piles of poo. The one place in the entire house where I could sit down without cringing had been defiled. I should have taken it as a bad omen and packed up then and there. Instead, I let my flatmate wash all my sheets (the one decent action I'd seen from them) and powered through.

A week later two of my flatmates were fired from their jobs at a café. Rather than handling it the mature way, with a lawyer and lots of dollar signs (or is that just the American way?) they went down to the establishment with their former co-workers and got into a shouting match with the owners. A few restraining orders later and we have police pounding at the door at 7AM and grabbing people as they walk into the house to see if we have any information about the our roommate, who has started to leave the place by jumping over the back fence. Luckily, I know nothing because no one is speaking to me after I was rude enough to ask them to stop their singalong around 3AM so that I could get some sleep. Apparently I'm demanding and totally uncool. But they're all tonedeaf, which is worse.

Now it's back to scanning the Room for Rent signs that flap from message boards and telephone polls. It's harder than it looks, but I don't know why. All I want is a house where people know how to clean up after themselves and animals are kept outdoors. It might be asking a lot, but someday I hope to live the dream.