My Cat is Not Crazy

Dear Friend,

What a relief to learn my cat, B, is not imagining things.

I live in a house of glass.  This is both a curse and a blessing for a cat.  You can see what’s out there but you can’t get to it.  Countless times I’ve been awoken in the middle of the night by bloodcurdling meows and B pacing back and forth between all the windows at the back of the house – the living room window to the kitchen window to the family room window to the master bedroom window back to the living room window and on and on.  This can last up to an hour, long after the offending intruder is gone, if there even is one.  Not being able to sleep through the ruckus I get up and press my face against each of the windows attempting to see what B sees in the dark, which is usually nothing.  I foolishly try to reassure him with soothing words like “it’s alright” and “there’s nothing out there”.  Eventually I surrender and crawl back into bed and wait for the moment to pass.

Well last night I got to be B; I got a glimpse of how it all starts.  It was 11:00 pm and B and my husband were fast asleep in the bedroom.  I’m reading by Kindle light in a dark living room.  Rustling in the geranium field just outside the window catches my attention.  I hear the leaves moving even though the window is closed.  I see the leaves moving, though I cannot see why.  I get up and press my face against the glass.  In a minute the opossum foraging in the geraniums comes into focus.  Its 2 inches from the window, at cat level.  Its oblivious to my presence even when I tap the window and turn on the light.  Its happily foraging.  Admittedly the opossum is kind of cute.  And yes, I do attempt to photograph it.  But if I do anymore I might wake up B.  In fact me not being in the bedroom should B awake for any reason might draw attention to the living room.  I like the peace of the night.  My husband likes his sleep.  It’s time to call it a night.  I bid the opossum goodnight, crawl into bed, and doze off praying that B won’t hear the rustling leaves at the other end of the house.

I dusted off pen and paper to write this letter.  I’m sorry I haven’t written sooner.  My hands have been bothering me as of late and computer use is the number one irritant.  So I wrote these thoughts on paper first.  What a fun experience.  You should see the mess I created on the paper, scratching out bad writing and changed thoughts, adding tiny little words into fixed spaces and sentences.  Some might call it art.

I have to sign off now.  B’s story reminds me that it’s his bath day and I must get it done before the day gets away from me.

Your friend always.


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1 comment

  1. Tyna says:

    Oh, how I wish I could have been there to watch the opossum! It’s been years since I’ve seen one. It’s surprising that B slept through the commotion. I agree with you about pen and paper…better, in many ways, than the computer. Yet, I rarely use that method when blogging because of the extra work involved. It’s a shame, really.