Write a story about yourself, told from your neighbor’s perspective.

I was overjoyed not to have a whole bunch of rabble-rousers next door. The people who lived there before were loud and there were entirely too many of them. Sometimes, there would be upwards of thirty people living there. They parked their cars on the lawn. I think they were some kind of gang. They set one of my cat’s tails on fire. They threw beer bottles in my yard. They were up at all hours playing loud music and they never did any sort of maintenance on the house. I was only too happy to see them finally get them evicted when the bank foreclosed. They were terrible people and not very neighborly.

This whole neighborhood has gone downhill since my husband and I first bought our home after the war. Ours is the nicest house on the block. Some of these people don’t mow their lawns or have any landscaping at all. The people on the other side of our house are of some Middle Eastern heritage and their music is awful. They have parties once a month with music so loud that you can’t hear yourself think over it, let alone carry on a conversation. I can’t see how that could be very sociable. They have gold lions and Grecian pillars out front. I don’t see how those things go together, but it’s their house. They can do what they want I suppose.

The house with the gang members sat vacant for a while. It was nice and peaceful. I was wary of who was going to move in next. When the couple first moved in next door, I thought they were a nice, young, married couple. There were only two of them as opposed to the thirty some people who lived there before. But after talking to the girl, I found out that they were only roommates. The boy apparently has a girlfriend somewhere else. I will never understand kids these days.

They were pleasant enough. They said hello when we met out front and I got to like them anyway even though they were potentially living in sin or some other odd living arrangement. Then, one day, shortly after they first moved in, the girl came over and said her cat was missing. Her cat! She has a cat! Now, we’re talking. You see, I take care of all the neighborhood kitties around here. I feed them at night and shelter them in my garage. I kept an eye out for her kitty, and one day, he showed up on my property.

I went next door and told her. It was, in fact, her cat. She was pleased and thanked me profusely. She was certainly raised with proper manners because the next day, she came over with a freshly-baked plate of cookies as a thank you. I began to like her more and more.

And then, summer rolled around and with it, I saw what she was really like. She has tattoos up and down her arms and on her legs, and she dyed her hair pink for a while. Pink! Can you imagine? She has such pretty blonde hair and she dyed it pink. So strange. And then she went and cut most of it off. If I had hair like that, I would keep it long, but she cut it all off. Kids these days. Oh well, at least she has manners, the house is mainly quiet and looked after properly now, and she’s not a gang member. Plus, she has a cat. She can’t be all bad, even if she does look a little strange.