Neighbors

My husband was raised in the middle of NOWHERE! Seriously, when he was young they lived in the mountains and then for a couple years they lived in suburbia and then they moved back into nowhere and bought a tree farm complete with chickens and turkeys, and with cows down the road. I on the other hand was raised in suburbia and on air force bases. Every once in awhile Edward will say, "when I get out of the Navy I want to move out of the city and buy land" I have requirements he must meet and he thinks he can deliver. It must be less than a 40 minute drive to a hospital not a clinic but an actual hospital. And there must also be a city closer than 30 miles. A real city not one where they tell you "but there's a walmart", I hate walmart.. but that's another blog... I digress, for years I've been thinking maybe I could get used to living in the middle of nowhere. Now I'm sure of it. About 6 months ago we got new neighbors across the street from us. Initially, I wasn't bothered by them. For the past 4 months they have been driving me to the brink of insanity. For those of you who don't know I have 2 cats. And they both have attitudes (one more than the other). There is no leash law on cats and my kitties like being outside (don't ask me why, in this heat I'd much prefer to be inside). But they are like snakes they lay on the pavement and sun themselves while they sleep, or they hide in the bushes under one of my windows and watch everything going past them. My cats know where their yard is, that's not saying they don't stray, they do, but they don't chase other animals unless they come into my yard. Back to my neighbors, they have three little yippy dogs who are very rarely if ever on leashes, and who don't know where their yard is and think that everything is their property. If they see my cats they will charge them and chase them. If they see me they charge at me, if the see my neighbor or her daughters who are scared of dogs they chase them and bark at them. Now, the "mother's" theory is to tell us "they don't bite" like that makes the whole thing better. A couple months one of the said "yappy" dogs found out he can get into my back yard and now it is usually a weekly occurrence that I have to chase a little dog out of my yard. I don't care for little dogs, when I was little I saw one get accidentally killed by being shut in a door during a sleepover and it scarred me for life. I believe I overcompensate, I have a 70 pound black lab. She has a kennel in the back she's usually in or she may have eaten one of these dogs at some point. I believe that today was my breaking point. As I was getting my kids an after school snack I heard a commotion at my front door. I open it to find my cat pushed against the door hissing and swatting at 3 dogs that have her cornered and the teenager who let the dogs out to go to the bathroom lazily walking across the street. I let Spice in shooed the dogs away and one of them goes into my neighbors yard and poops. (I know this bugs her because she doesn't have a dog, who wants to clean up another dogs poop, I don't even like cleaning up after Jewel). At this point I looked at the teenager, who I have told before that if she leashed her dogs this wouldn't happen, that if I were her I would go get a bag and clean up after her dog as it just went in the other neighbors yard. She just looked at me like I was the meanest person ever and walked in the house. Please don't tell me that this is what I have to look forward to when Tabi becomes a teenage girl. So here I am "mean Mrs. Gossett" (wow I thought I'd have to age another 40 years for that title) So starting tomorrow, I'm gonna let jewel run loose in the backyard and when they complain that Jewel ate one of their precious dogs I'm going to tell them I don't know what they're talking about but if they leashed their dog they would know where it was.