A Cat is not A Deadly Weapon
I live in a rough neighborhood. It is not the roughest neighborhood by any stretch, but it is rough. We have crack whores, loonies, druggies, thieves, and arseholes.

Let me tell you about this little guy named Gus.

I have lived here for seven years. The rent is cheap. Electricity and heating are included in the rent. It's a rooming house that has six spots converted into apartments, and the rest is just rented rooms. I have one of the apartments. That means bedroom, living room, kitchen facilities, and my own private bathroom.

For the first six years that i lived here, the landlord rented one room on each floor out to the Department of Mental Health as transitional space. So we always had a constant supply of loonies.

Physically Gus reminds me of a plump and aging Wally Cox. He goes around with his shoulders hunched and his head jutting out with his chin lowered. He's a delusional Schizophrenic. When he's on his meds, he's fairly calm. When he periodically goes off his meds, he's strange and threatening.

From day one, Gus decided I was a prostitute. He periodically asks me how much I charge and tries to get me to smell his dirty underwear.

one day, off his meds, and delusional, he attacked Scott with a cat in the hallway just outside my door. Gus had scooped up poor Midnight who had escaped from Charlene's apartment again, and was hitting Scott in the face with the cat. Midnight was confused and terrified, so he did what was instinctual: he sank his claws into Scott's face in an attempt to get enough purchase to free himself from Gus. Gus would jerk Midnight lose and hit Scott in the face again with the cat. I got in between them and rescued Midnight. By then Scott's face was a mass of bleeding scratches and tears. Scott took Gus to court, and claimed that the cat was a deadly weapon. The judge ruled that the cat was not a deadly weapon. Gus was released on the grounds that he was a loony.

Today, Gus threatened to knife me. Sigh. I invited him to try it, and reminded him that when knife versus my cast iron fry pan, fry pan always wins.