Curtainless neighbours enjoy dumping in public and stealing cats.
I live in a weird, old house that was renovated into small loft apartments. There are some awkwardnesses to this arrangement, chief of which is that my neighbour's bathroom window (a large, full-length window) opens directly onto my balcony. My large sliding-glass door opens onto the balcony, and is at a 90-degree angle from their bathroom window.
In short,
I can see them on the toilet.
I have curtains. They are sheer, but can be closed for privacy. However, we sometimes have them open because, well,
it's a sliding glass door onto our balcony. It constitutes one entire wall of our studio apartment, and is our main source of air. The cat comes and goes. We want see what he's doing out there, we have to move them to run the air conditioner, etc.
The old neighbour, like every reasonable person in the world would, had a big opaque blind over the bathroom window. Even when his window was open for air, the blind would be down, and we never could see into his bathroom. The new neighbours have taken the step of putting some blurry privacy-coating stuff on the glass of the window, an admirable attempt, really, but...they seem to have forgotten the most important part of the whole thing:
closing the window when they are taking a dump.
The privacy issue is getting annoying, but even worse, they've taken to talking to my cat through the bathroom window. This makes him go CRAZY. He scratches at their screen, and yowls like a nutbar. (Whenever he does this, we promptly bring him inside, where he
pines and lays around and yowls like an idiot for days, wanting to go outside and play with the neighbour window.) And the worst: one morning while my back was turned, the neighbour actually
brought my cat inside through the window, and when I looked outside, he was gone. Cat-napped. I rapped on their door and got him back from a smiling, giggling girl in her underwear. Charming.
I should have nailed a board or something over the damn bathroom window, on my balcony, before the new people moved in. But I didn't think they would be complete
morons, or cat-stealers. Should I just put up some more curtains on my side of things, and keep the cat from ever going out on the balcony (which, stuck in a small apartment in a big city, is his sole reason for living)? Should I ask them to put something up, ask the superintendant to put something up, or what?
I'm irritated, but not exactly sure what to do, or (if I should speak with them) what to say.
So...?
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posted by MaryDellamorte at 2:51 PM on September 13, 2008 [3 favorites]