Before I went to bed Sunday night, I said to myself “I’d like to wake up about 5:45 tomorrow, so I can get showered and get my entry posted and get an early jump on the day.” Monday mornings are the mornings I drive into Huntsville to clean cages at Petsmart, then run over to Target to buy whatever’s on the “I need” list, and then head for home. Most mornings I leave the house around 7:00, and it’s usually after 10:00 by the time I get everything done and get home. That’s still early, I know, but it tends to feel like the day is half gone.
So anyway, I said to myself, “I’d like to wake up about 5:45 tomorrow”, in hopes that my brain would take that under advisement and wake me precisely at 5:45. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Yesterday morning, I popped awake, and I said to myself “Oh! Is it 5:45?”, and I turned over to look at the clock, and it was 4:45.
“FIVE forty-five, I said!” I snapped at my stupid brain, and then I rolled over and went back to sleep.
Some time later, I was awakened by the sound of an angry screaming wildcat. I popped awake, and glanced over at the clock. It was 5:07. Just as my brain started to form the thought “What the – ?”, there was another, louder, angrier screaming wildcat sound. It scared the crap out of me, maybe because I’d taken out my earplugs and so when the sound occurred it send a spike of pain through my eardrum.
I heard the elephantine sounds of cats racing all over the house. I jumped out of bed and started turning on lights. Sugarbutt peered from under my bed, his eyes big and dark. I walked through the house looking for the source of the sound. Everywhere I went, cats stood frozen, all of them staring in completely different directions, eyes dark and tailed puffed.
I went upstairs. Newt sat under the guest bedroom bed, staring at Spanky, who was hunched in the middle of the guest bedroom rug. Both of them had dark eyes, both of them had puffed tails. I kept walking through the house, flipping on lights. After a second tour of the house, I determined that the source of the sound – Stinkerbelle; she’s the only one capable of such anger and volume in a scream – was nowhere to be found.
In horror, I tried to remember seeing her last night after we’d spend some time with the foster kittens in the room upstairs, and couldn’t. I ran upstairs and opened the door to the foster room, sure that I’d see the foster kittens in pieces all over the floor, and an angry Stinkerbelle perched atop the cat tree. All four foster kitties were frozen in place in the middle of the floor, staring toward the door with dark eyes and puffed tails. I looked all over the room, and the kittens never moved, just kept staring toward the door.
I made another circuit of the house, and just as Fred walked in from outside (he’d been in the garage working out), I spotted Stinkerbelle standing in the middle of the laundry room looking annoyed.
The cats pretty quickly went back to normal, though Sugarbutt stayed under the bed for another half hour or so just to be safe.
All I can guess is that someone got a little too close to the princess, and she didn’t like it, so unleashed the scream. She’s a force to be reckoned with, that one.
I was awake by 5:45, anyway. Maybe my brain and Stinkerbelle were working together to make sure I’d be up in time.
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Miss Momma (Maxi) got locked in the garage for a good part of the day yesterday. When I was leaving, I hit the button to close the garage door, and she came running over and into the garage. I would have left the garage door up a little so she could leave when she wanted, but you can’t just leave the door up a little, you have to leave it up like three feet (I have no clue WHY), so I shrugged and shut the door and figured it wouldn’t hurt her to spend a few hours in there. She and Newt like to hang out in the upstairs, where there’s a rug and usually plenty of sun.
When I got home, I had a bunch of groceries to bring inside, so I parked on the driveway – because it’s closer to the door – and brought my groceries in, and at no point did I think to myself “Oh, I need to let Miss Momma out!”, because I had completely forgotten.
Mid-afternoon, I went out to the garage to get the wreath hanger for the front door and when I opened the door, Miss Momma came racing out, howling the entire way.
You’d think that this would discourage her from running into the garage when the door is open, but this isn’t the first time she’s been trapped in the garage for the better part of a day, and I suspect it won’t be the last time, either.
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TOO. MANY. CATS.
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Previously
2006: Catie and her kittens.
2005: No entry.