too many cats

Last night, we were watching TV when we heard clanging, banging, and things being knocked over downstairs. It sounded like someone was on a rampage — tearing the place up. Then we heard something or something racing up the stairs, smashing into walls, coming directly our way. We looked at each other and tried to untangle ourselves from the blanket and the cat and rushed over to meet the impending doom.

What we saw was our other cat, frantically running passed us and into a bedroom. He sometimes chases his tail, or a toy, and every so often jumps up the wall to try and catch a passing headlight, but he remembers his laziness and goes back to sleeping pretty quickly. This was a level of energy we’d never seen from this cat. We peered into the bedroom and saw him pacing. He seemed to have something cornered. I just knew it was a mouse. A mouse! In our house. Maybe there were more. And how would we get rid of this one anyway?

Just then, the “mouse” jumped up the wall at the window. When he failed to smash through, he tried again, and again. Then darted out between our legs with our cat in close pursuit. We realized it was another cat. A cat who was running for his life. Our cat chased him up the futon, around the table, back into the bedroom and out again. We could barely keep track of the speeding cats.

When I was dizzy from all the running in circles, P. finally grabbed our cat and I managed to get ahold of the extra one. He was a beautiful cat, but I didn’t get much chance to admire him as his poor little heart was beating wildly and he was struggling to break free, bewildered as to where he was and how this happened and why. It’s difficult to hold on to a squirmy cat in the best of circumstances, and this was not that. He obviously was someone’s pet and not a wild cat, or my arms would be torn up well beyond the few scratches I ended up with.

I brought him downstairs and opened the front door and he was off like a rocket, running into the night. P. came downstairs. “Well, that was unexpected.”

We figure he got in through an open window. It was raining and he probably thought it was a warm, safe place to hide out.

He didn’t know about our vigilant watch cat. (Although, to be honest, neither did we.)

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