Halls of the Dark Muse

I have a crazy cat lady for a neighbor, now of course I like cats, and am not bothered by cats, I have three of my own, though I can never keep track of exactly how many cats she has, they don't bother me, and they all appear to be well fed, well groomed, healthy clean animals, so I take no issue with her having several cats. The reason why I call her crazy cat lady is because in addition to having a rather large number of cats, she also is crazy and not because she has a lot of cats.

First of all she is one of those neighbors that actually wants to be friendly and try and engage her neighbors socially, which to the normal person might not sound like a terrible thing, but to someone like me it is undesirable. For me the perfect neighborly relationship is one in which maybe if I happened to see them outside I might nod in their direction (or possibly if I am feeling particularly generous wave at them) but beyond I can carry on oblivious to their existence.

But in addition to the fact that she does try to force her presence onto me she does do things that just make you think WTF! What moderately sane person would do something like that?

To give an example, up against our fence between our yard and hers we have a salvia plant gowning, and one day she was learning over the fence and picking flowers from the plant. And it is just like do you not understand the concept and purpose of a fence? This isn't some sort of communal garden. Yeah if part of the plant is extending into the other person's yard they have the right to cut it if they want, but just because it happens to be next to your yard doesn't mean you can help yourself.

On the side of our house that is next to her house we have a few bird feeders which we use especially during the winter (Not that California really has winter any more) to put out bird seed for the local birds. So one day I happened to notice there was piles of bread on top of the fence, of which I can only presume the neighbor had set out there for the birds.

But first of all, don't leave your old stale food on top of our fence, thank you very much, and second of all, bread isn't even good for birds anyway.

Then one day when I was out taking my walk I noticed next to her driveway at the end of it on the other side of her house (the side farthest from us, next to her other neighbors) there was this plastic dish which had some old food sitting in it, it seemed to be kind of weird, but maybe someone was eating outside or something and set it down than forgot about it. So it was strange, but not really something to give much thought to. But than I started to notice on a daily basis, the same dish still there in the same spot, but with seemingly different bits of old food in it.

I cannot even beginning to come up with an explanation for why someone would just leave scarps of food to rot on their property. It is utterly and completely baffling, and somewhat disturbing really.

And I am pretty sure they are Christians so I don't think they practice any form of ancestral worship in which one of their customs is to leave out offerings of food to appease she spirits (which is the only explanation I could come up with which might possibly at least make some sense)

Or to be fair they may be feeding their pet invisible pig, or they are plagued with a haunting from a ghost pig.