I grew up in a different time--when Americans ridiculed the Russian Olympics team members for using steroids and whined about how unfair it was that our clean-cut Americans were competing against souped-up Communists. The era parodied by the Zucker Brothers in a Top Secret scene wherein muscular men in drag posed as Communist bloc Olympic women athletes. I still get a laugh from older listeners when I talk about an incident when I had to feed a baby Saw-whet Owl some exceptionally large mice. I say they were huge--they looked more like rats than mice, like "the Russian shot-put team of mice."

Kids today wouldn't get it. The asterisk is there for those of us who do remember when as a society we almost uniformly ridiculed those who cheated by using steroids, associating such cheating with totalitarian regimes who used athletics to "prove" the superiority of their system.

I find it endlessly fascinating that even as more and more we resemble the totalitarian Russia of the 50s--in our red tape and bureaucracy with regard to health care, in our government spying on our citizens, in our citizenry's apathy and sense of helplessness about making a difference--we've also become like them in the use of steroids in sports.

I'm keeping the asterisk next to Bonds's name, to always remember that Hank Aaron was the one who scored the most home runs during the time that America was a Democracy.

>I would say your letters are summing up *your* problem nicely...

Ah, but I'm not the one with a problem. Whenever someone starts thinking of a roommate as a "crazy bitch," they're in for some rocky times, don't you think?

I grew up in a large family, and when I was young, I lived with a variety of roommates before I got married. I've watched my children learn to deal with roommates. It's complicated. Successfully living with another person, especially in a small space, requires clear and honest communication. But it also requires some flexibility and the ability to see both sides of issues. I personally think the roommate has an annoying quirk which would irritate me a lot (patty-cake with a cat???!), but haven't seen any evidence that she's truly endangering the cats or that she's a "crazy bitch."

If the LW writes a line in the sand, unless she's extremely tactful, her roommate may very well draw some lines in the sand of her own. These things very often escalate. That's all I was trying to say. Clear communication isn't even easy when people are very removed from a problem, and grows increasingly difficult when people have a huge emotional investment in the outcome. I'm assuming that the LW wishes to keep this roommate. My experiences of needing to have a roommate to share housing expenses may not be pertinent here. But if indeed she does need to keep her roommate, thinking of the woman as a crazy bitch is exactly what she should not do.

>LW, i repeat, get that crazy bitch away from your kitties!

I would almost bet the roommate is getting similar advice. And that pretty much sums up the problem, doesn't it?

>Roommate knows whose cats they are and knew they were part of the deal when she moved in.

I don't think we know the terms of this deal, and where the boundaries were set, from the letter. Maybe the LW asked if the roommate would mind a couple of cats, the roommate said, "I LOVE cats!" and that's all that was said. I doubt if the LW was clear from the start that she was going to dictate exactly how the roommate was or wasn't allowed to play with those cats.

I'd be furious if my roommate played with my computer, or my iPod, without my permission. Televisions are "joint" property, normally, though usually the owner of the TV gets priority when they both want to watch different shows at the same time. Pictures on the wall in common spaces are usually decided by both roommates, even if they belong to one or the other. Cats "belong" to one person, but are joint in that they wander about wherever they like, and both people have to put up with the bad as well as the good elements of cat ownership. If the LW wishes after the fact to add restrictions to the "deal" that there are cats living in the common spaces, she better be ready for a full review of that deal.

Setting boundaries is very important. But boundary defenses go two ways, and the LW should realize that the roommate may also have boundaries. The roommate might just decide that if she can't play with the cats the way she enjoys, then she doesn't want those cats imposing on her in her living space. Impasses often start when a passive-aggressive person too-firmly and self-righteously establishes boundaries without realizing how much s/he has been violating the other person's boundaries. And if both people are passive-aggressive, or just learning how to deal with sharing a living space with someone, look out!