Scaredy Cat

It’s three o’clock in the morning.

I’m posting now because I’m trying to burn off that shakey energy that you get after you’ve had the poop scared out of you (also know as adrenalin).

It’s been a long time since I’ve been really scared, for any reason, and I’d forgotten what a horrible feeling it is.

So here’s the deal: I’m sleeping peacefully. Baby starts screaming. It shouldn’t be a big deal as I live in a house with a baby that occasionally wakes up during the night. Then I realized the screaming (and I mean the top-of-the-lungs kind) wasn’t coming from my baby’s room and wasn’t showing up on the monitor.

With the haze of sleep still fogging my mind I think, “Why is that baby crying? Why can I hear it? Why is the sound coming from my front porch?”

Next thought: “OH MY GOSH! The murderer who uses the sound of crying baby to lure women to open the door is standing on my front porch. What am I going to do?”

Heart pounding, the screaming continues. Laying in my bed with 911 dialed on my cell phone (seriously) I realize all the “screams” sound exactly the same.

Wait. That’s not a baby, that’s got to be a cat.

What’s it doing on my front porch roaring (not screaming) at 2:30 in the morning? Is it hurt? Is it dropping its litter on my door mat? Should I go see if it’s okay?

OR is it a murderer using injured cat (instead of baby) crying to get me to open the door?

The howling continues, now with a muffled whimper in between, and I start to worry about Gavin in the front bedroom. Is he okay? Is he scared?

I develop a plan. After checking on Gav, I crawl down the entryway (’cause the scary-boogie-man won’t be able to shoot through the door and hit me if I’m on the floor, right? ) and peek through the blinds. Slowly raising the fourth slat from the bottom, and praying I don’t see a big scary shoe, I peek outside.

Whew! No scary shoe, but two cats laying not five feet from my front door waving their tails sinuously back and forth. And still making that god-awful cat howl.

Should I open the door and scare them away? Why are they staring at my front door? Is there a cat-training-master/murderer out there, somewhere waiting for me to open the door?

I crawl back down the entryway and hop in my bed surrounded by a wall of pillows…and send a text message to my mom. (Isn’t funny how when I’m scared and have no one here to turn to, the first person I think of is my mother?)

She replies, “Don’t open the door. Just try to ignore.” Good advice, especially since I’ve woken you up in the middle of the night. Thanks Mom.

I lay down in my bed and the howling stops. After five minutes of relative silence I make my way (still army crawling) down the entryway. The cats are gone. Silence reigns the night again (except for the occasional pop of my fridge that keeps making me jump).

I realize that even though Jamie is halfway around the globe (do you honestly think I’d be this scared if my big and brave husband was laying next to me?) I can call him and not wake him up.

He answers the phone on the fifth ring and his hello is shaky, I’m sure I’ve made him nervous. Why would I call at 3 a.m. if there wasn’t an issue?

I tell him the story (leaving out the part about my stealthy army crawling skills) and he says, “I would have opened the door.”

Of course he would! He hasn’t read the emails about the sound-effect-using-murderer-men, which is not a figment of my imagination (right?). He agrees that a cat could have been injured or delivering kittens or more likely hunting the doves that live in our front bushes.

To make me feel a little better, he says, “It’s good you didn’t open the door. Maybe they cornered a snake.”

Great. One more thing to add to the bevy of images feeding my nightmares, snakes on the front porch.

He goes back to work and I try to go to sleep. Not likely.

Now it’s four o’clock. I feel a little less hyped-up. I’ll turn off the computer, lay in my bed, and probably not sleep as I’m wondering if I’ll find a litter of kittens, dove carcass, or cottonmouth snake when I open the door tomorrow.

Sweet dreams.

One Comment

  • Elizabeth (aka: Looli)

    You are brave for even getting out of bed! When we heard a knock at our BACK DOOR at 3am, both Brandon and I were too chicken/too groggy? to get out of bed and check it out! SEriously, we were such idiots! We could have just gotten out of bed, pressed the panic button on the alarm in our room, and waited. Instead we just laid there. It was a friendly type knock, so it was probably just some neighbor that was drunk and lost. 🙂 THat’s comforting.

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