The other commenters got it: ...and then the neighbor with the cats and the traps and the camera and the occasional feral cat locked in her bathroom moved in.

The other commenters got it: ...and then the neighbor with the cats and the traps and the camera and the occasional feral cat locked in her bathroom moved in. Before then... One time I woke up to my girlfriend-at-the-time standing in our bed in tears, wavering over me with a baseball bat in hand. We were in good standing at the time, so I was confused but thought I was done for. Turns out she was trying to hunt down a big fat rat that she saw waddling across the dresser. I had just finished a thirty-hour stretch of work so I was in no shape to deal with it. She broke some things with the bat, and it ended up waddling its fat ass back into the walls. I think it ate some poison because it ended up scratching at the walls for about a week as it slowly expired. Then the stink arrived and it took about as long to leave.