We live above a ravine, and also very near Puget Creek and other large greenways. The potential threats to our cats' lives are right there in front of us, visceral as can be. And yet we can't bring ourselves to keep Quincy indoors, to forcibly insulate him from the life he was bred to live. That would be caving to paranoia, a slap in the face of nature.
There are no sidewalks on my block, and the houses are the very definition of "crapshoot." One of my neighbors appears to have air-lifted the lodge off the set of Dirty Dancing and placed it on his property—a massive lakeside log cabin, only without the lake. And until very recently, another had a big green Dumpster in her side yard. Usually when people have Dumpsters in their yard, it's a temporary thing. But that woman's Dumpster went nowhere for upward of a year; only when she put her house on the market did it finally disappear.
Laurie Pearman
A poster for Sacha,
the most ubiquitous
missing cat in the
greater Delridge area.
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While my block is relatively peaceful, the home belonging to a Middle Eastern family across the street was recently subjected to the "worst act of graffiti" that the investigating officer said he'd ever seen. Even their cars weren't spared from the big red swooshes of spray paint, and the crime, although still unsolved, was clearly not the work of a random hooligan. Home businesses also abound: Down the street, an auto mechanic and a massage therapist both carve out a living a few feet from their doorsteps. And my next-door neighbors run a construction business out of their home. Rare is the time when there aren't at least a half-dozen gigantic pickups parked in front of their house, and it's not unusual for a full-on dump truck to be parked in front of ours.
Since we moved in a year ago, our small front yard has served as a veritable bathroom stall for area hounds intent on taking a leisurely morning crap. We also happen to live near a registered sex offender. When I returned from the corner store the other day to find law-enforcement officials executing a search warrant on this person's house, it reminded me yet again that I should have checked the county database before I made my down payment. I firmly believe that individuals like this deserve a second chance without being unjustly demonized, but when that second chance is occurring a short distance from your lot line, and appears not to be coming off without a hitch, it's a little difficult to shrug off.
The American Dream it's not. The American Reality is probably a better way to describe life along Delridge, for pets and people alike. Indeed, diverse communities come with a cost. But we hope that cost won't be too steep, and the reward will feel hard-earned. Those are the best kind of rewards anyway.
mseely@seattleweekly.com
Emma Breysse contributed to this story.
