Utterly Mad

A few years ago, I had what you could call a pretty serious drinking problem, as well as what you'd maybe call a less serious drug problem. When you go to the local version of AA, you're asked why your there and what your worst moment was that made you decide to get help.

I was also one of those kids who there's just something "not right" about in highschool, and was shunned accordingly. I don't know why, I think i was a pretty decent kid, but for whatever reason, other kids were dicks. Anyway, this left me with this kinda nuts sense of vengeance for a few years afterwards that would really come out when I was drunk.
 
But anyway, when I went to AA, I ended up telling a different story involving some petty crime or something (I honestly don't remember anymore) that's probably objectively worse than the real story. But the real story is kinda funny if not a little pathetic, and I've never really got to tell anyone. So:
 
At the time this happened, I was "living" with four or five other people in this utter slum of a townhouse - when I say living, I mean paying rent. I'd effectively moved in with the woman I ended up getting married to and who helped me get a little cleaned up, but still spent alot of time over at the old place, getting drunk or high with the guys. While I can look at it now and go "yeesh", at the time it seemed like a lot of fun.
 
Now, for the most part, these were actually pretty decent people, but there was one guy there who I just did not get along with at all when we were both drunk. Originally, he had just asked to stay on the couch, but somehow ended up living there rent free for a couple of months. He'd get very, very competitive about literally anything, and usually the night would end when he'd start trying to fight people. He was also what I'll call "bossy" for lack of a better word, and allergic to pretty much everything under the sun, which meant that when he was there, we had to lock the pets in the basement, eat certain foods outside, etc. etc. I don't think he was actually that allergic to anything, he was just kind of a prick. Anyway, long story short, he just really rubbed me the wrong way.
 
Anyway, one afternoon it was just me and him there, all of our other roommates being out of town or at work - I live in a little oilpatch town, so at work usually means in camp for a week or three. This guy didn't have a job, and I have pretty normal hours, so it was just he and I, and we got LOADED. As the day went on, he got super belligerent, and honestly, I was getting pretty sick of it. So, I left as usual, but vowed to teach him a bit of a lesson.
 
Now, when I say this place was a slum, I mean it was possibly the sketchiest place you could possibly live in a town this size. Half the places didn't have windows, people got shot in the parking lot once or twice a year, everything stunk like shit and crack, etc. etc. There was also ALOT of stray animals roaming around. I always thought the winters would kill them, but I guess not.
 
"How's this relevant?" you ask. Well, for some reason, rather than do something a little more direct like actually fighting the guy or something, I figured the best way to mess with him would be to gather up as many stray cats as I could find, sneak them in the house, and turn them loose. I was REALLY drunk.
 
So, that's what I did. I spent five or six hours catching cats and getting more drunk, and ended up with about two dozen of them. It was two or three in the morning by this point, so I figured he'd be asleep. I snuck in the back, and more or less just threw this big box of cats into the living room, slammed the door, and booked it home. I remember being kind of surprised that the noise didn't wake him up, but I got the hell out of there as quick as I could.
 
Surprisingly a few weeks went by, I didn't hear anything from him about it. I did, however, hear about from one of the other guys who lived there. Turns out that buddy didn't wake up because he wasn't there. In fact, no one was there, for about two weeks. In the mean time, the cats had literally destroyed the place - they got into all the rooms and tore the place apart, fought with eachother and bled everywhere, shat all over the place in the manner of a bunch of sick, half starved cats, etc. etc. This was not a nice place to begin with, but after two weeks locked in there, the cats turned it from a slum into an active war zone. Where the weapons were feces and cat smell.
 
As I said, I heard about all this from one of the other guys who lived there, who happened to be the first one home. Being that I was a bit of a scuzz in those days, I told him I hadn't been by there in a few weeks, since I didn't think anyone but the unlikable dude was there.
 
"Do you think (that guy) left the door open or something?" I suggested.
 
Anyway, in the end, (that guy) moved out right when he got home a couple weeks later. Everyone blamed him, but to be fair, he ended up kinda going a little ballistic at the end and also literally crapping on everyone else's stuff on the day he moved out, so I don't feel too bad for him per se. Everyone else moved out within a few months simply because the only way to actually clean the place up would have been to burn it down. It might be because there's a bit of a recession up here right now, but as far as I know, the place is still empty and the property management company has made zero effort to even try cleaning it out - for the record, this was maybe four or five years ago, and it's still empty.