Living with a terrorist....a true tale of fear and intimidation

Little did we know when he came to our door, that our lives would soon be owned by him. Sure, there were signs - scruffy unkempt look, wild eyes, furtive mannerisms. But he was hungry and homeless - what could we do? We had a few arguments about what to do about him. "Let him go somewhere else", Henry said, "We don't have room for him, we're gone a lot, and heaven knows what he'll do in our house while we're gone".

"But he came to OUR door", I said. "There must be a reason and after all it's the Christian thing to do". I reminded him that when Jesus is asked in Matthew 25 who will get into heaven, Jesus told them, "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in."

So we let him into our home. He finally had enough food to eat, and boy, was he ravenous. He had a roof over his head and warm bed to sleep in and it seemed he slept for days on end - only coming in to the kitchen for food and drink. When his belly was full and his sleep caught up, he tried to prove his worth by doing little things around the house. He was very good at pest control and toilet bowl cleaning although I often had to go behind him on the latter.

He didn't speak our language so it was hard to know his thoughts. At first he didn't talk much, but with time he found his voice. That's when things started to go wrong. He was starting to feel confident that we were not going to throw him out. He developed a snarly attitude. He demanded more food and wanted his own bathroom. He began to be picky about his food, so I would have to buy specialty food for him. He developed a taste for the finer foods like smoked salmon and filet mignon and he wanted them EVERY day - not just on special occasions as we were accustomed to.

He commandeered his own chair and dared anyone else to sit in it. Henry sat there once, unaware of his obsession with that chair, and he slapped him....hard. And big, bad Henry didn't do a thing about it except get up out of the chair and let him have it. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Henry never took any flak off of anybody and here he was, giving in to this stranger we had let in to our home.

As time went by, he began to get fatter and lazier and no longer worked for his room and board. He would have moments of kindness and even began to show a bit of affection towards us, but it would be short lived and he would become a madman again.

Who was this crazy stranger? His name is Theo. Today, he is exhibiting his best behavior. But any minute now he could snap. Every time he goes out and comes back in, I expect him to have a suicide bomb attached to his body. He walks in the door, like a policeman would walk into each room searching for a suspect. He steps up to each door frame, pauses, looks around the corner and then satisfied that there's no one waiting to gun him down, he'll walk on into the room.

It's been very hard to take photos of him since he's been living with us -I have to furtively take one when he doesn't realize what I'm doing. Sometimes he tries to grab hold of the strap of the camera and destroy it. But here are a few I have managed to capture unbeknownst to him:

The first day he appeared at our door.  Note the scruffy, wild eyed look about him.  That should have been a warning sign.

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At Christmas, stealing the decorations off my tree.  Here, he's terrorizing the elf.

Here, he's sitting on my lap, preventing me from using the computer.  He thinks I'm reporting him to Homeland Security, so he confiscated the mouse.

And above, he's looking all innocent like.  But you can still see those crazy eyes and the smug look on his face.

Each morning when he greets me after being locked in the laundry room all night, he demands more food.  I'll start off giving him dry which he nibbles on.  Then he'll come back to the breakfast table as I'm having my first cup of coffee and try to sweetly coerce me to come back to his food bowl.  He'll walk back to his dry food trying to lead me.  If I don't immediately get up, he starts bristling up and batting my legs with his paws, letting out the claws just to show me he can.  I don't know how far he'll go if he really gets mad, so I jump up and get him a can of Friskie's finest.  He is now appeased and good naturedly gets up on my lap.

It's tough living with a terrorist.  I'm resigned to keeping him, but if Homeland Security ever comes knocking on my door, I'll say, "Welcome in - he's hiding in the closet".