I ran into my neighbor Anne yesterday. We hadn’t seen one another in a few days. I was out two evenings ago and she wasn’t around last night. So I hadn’t yet heard the latest.

About Bertilda. The latest is always about our crazy neighbor. The woman is rapidly devolving into a creature.

Bertilda has always been a troubled individual. Quick to anger, comfortable with indignation, a rigid follower of all statutes and no customs. In the last decade, dementia and memory loss have been added to what’s at least a borderline personality disorder and possibly sociopathology.

As far as we neighbors can tell, she no longer bathes or launders and she rarely eats. Now that the county has taken her car, she never leaves the property where she lives. Most of every day she hunkers down in her overcrowded apartment. She has a forest of potted orchids there and at least five years’ worth of junk mail and catalogs.

She also has a cat. Kind of. It’s an outside animal, so it’s away from her more than it’s with her. We don’t know what she feeds her pet; Bertilda is a vehement recycler but we never see cat food containers in the blue bin. We suspect she doesn’t give the animal much food now. We hear her hourly calling “Kitty kitty kitty” (in a much sweeter tone than she ever uses to people), and she makes the circuit of our doorways at least every other day, asking any of us who answer if we have eaten her cat. Many of us now try to be aware of her approach and pretend we’re not home.

Eaten her cat? Whatever would put the notion in her head? Has she eaten cats before? Or been around people who eat cats?

I’ve seen her cat shitting in my yard. Right in the middle, unshielded by any shrubs. And the bowel movements I’ve witnessed don’t look cat-normal. Small wonder if the animal is looking elsewhere for sustenance.

“You know we had the police here the other day?” is how Anne opened the conversation. She showed me a warm smile. She recently celebrated her retirement by shearing off her pony tail and having her hair cut; now it curls around her face and makes her look younger.

“No. I didn’t. I don’t. Do tell.”

“Well Jen was parking her car in Bertilda’s old space…”

“Yeah. Like we all told her to.”

“Right. And she noticed some material had landed on her car. ‘Landed’ as in ‘having been dropped on the car from an upper window.’ The material was excrement-like, in color and texture.”

“Get out! No shit?” I laughed. You have to laugh at Bertilda or you’ll cry.

“Uh huh. Jen called the police. I wasn’t there when the officer arrived but Jen had a law school friend with her and they both told me about it.

“They managed to get Bertilda downstairs. The cop tried to talk to her. She was firing off as usual within seconds: ‘You bastard!’ I hear she said. And ‘I don’t have to listen to you.’”

“I can imagine it. Wow, I can hear her vile tone of voice as you say it.”

“Well, the cop got mad. He told Bertilda if she was going to shout, he’d outshout her. And he did. He yelled at her that she DOES have to listen to him.”

“But he didn’t take her away,” I said.

“Noooo. And Jen was pretty upset even after he yelled at Bertilda. I told her she could use my space until the hearing next week. I’m parking on the street now.”

“So Bertilda prevailed again.” Of course I shook my head as I said that. It astounds me how the woman keeps getting away with aggressive uncivilized lawless behavior.

“The cop says they’ve ‘flagged’ the house at the station. He told Jen that Bertilda calls almost daily, asserting that her car has been stolen and insisting that the police act on the theft. He said they’ve gotten regular complaints from neighbors for over a year now. He told Jen she should always interview residents before moving into a place. He also said it was just a matter of time before Bertilda is dragged, kicking and screaming, from her home. He added that it wouldn’t be him doing the dragging; that’s a county job.”

“So to review the current situation,” I said, “we have reason to suspect that Bertilda is eating cats and flinging excrement? Like a monkey? Like one of Gulliver’s Yahoos?”

Anne got it. She’s a retired teacher and an educated person.

Bertilda’s supposed to show up in court next week. The judge will decide whether to make the conservatorship permanent. We all expect that decision. We only wonder how long it will then be, before she’s dragged out of our lives.