Out with the kid, In with the Cat

On the street outside of the The Black Cat (the hostel where I am staying) lives a woman, with a young son and a baby. I had seen the child come into the bar a few times, looking for candy, or a quetzale from the folks in the bar/restaurant, which also serves as the entrance to the hostel. I later learned that the woman subsits by requiring payment to all those who park their cars on the street. Ostensibly to protect them, it's really a veiled threat that she'll slash your tires or something if you don't pay the protection fee.....it sounds a little like the mafia. The woman clearly has some sort of disability or psychological disease. She doesn't really seem to be able to speak, she just sort of makes grunting noises, and she seems to have other difficulties as well. When I returned to the hostel last night, Avery the kitten - who gives the place it's name - darted out the door while I was entering. I walked across the street and retreived him. The owner, who had noticed the escape, came to the door, took the kitten from me, and lovingly chastised it. He put the cat down, and was returning to the bar when he noticed that the child of the afforementioned woman. The kid had apparently been in the bar for a little while, and was interacting with some of the patrons. The owner picked the child up to take him outside, and the child began to cry. He set the kid down outside the door and the kid tried to get in again. About this time, the woman came running over - she had been looking for the child, and she was clearly distraught. The owner started telling the woman, angrily, that she needed to keep track of her kids, and the woman began to make threatening motions at him, drawing her finger across her throat, and then proceeding to pick up beer bottles and smash them on the ground at his feet. At this point all the patrons of the bar had come to watch, and most seemed to think the whole thing was quite entertaining. There was one californian girl in particular who kept returning to the people in the back of the bar, describing the action, and posing rhetorical questions like, "God! What is wrong with that woman??!" or "Where do these people come from?!?" The conflict eventually ended, and I went to bed. I understood the owner's problem with having the child in the bar, and why he would take him back out to the street - especially since the woman wouldn't know where her kid was, and seemed to at least partially blame the owner for letting him come inside. But the difference in the demeanor that he showed to the kid and the cat was unsettling.