There
are many reasons why I will always live with Kitty, such as she’s my
daughter, I love her, and she’s very entertaining, helps with bills and loves
to vacuum. However, there’s an even
bigger reason why she will always be my roommate…
It
had been a very rough week, and on this particular Friday night I just wanted
to kick back and relax after dinner.
After all: I deserved it! Kitty was
in her room, and I decided to watch reruns of “Reba” and enjoy some Cheetos and
a juice box. The cats were keeping me
company, so it was going to be a good night!
Presently,
as it was getting to a really good part of one of my favorite episodes, I heard
a tiny little noise. It wasn’t me
crunching on the Cheetos, so it must have been the cats. I looked to my left: Charlie was sleeping on
a chair. I looked to my right: Luna was
sleeping on another chair. Something
told me to look up. My eyes slowly
traveled up the wall and there, perched on the wall like a painting, was a bat!
A
couple of things went through my mind at this point: like it was February and technically bats
were supposed to be hibernating; how exactly was the bat clinging to the sheer
face of the wall in the first place, and a pest control person had told me that
to get rid of a bat you turned on lights in all the rooms except the one with
the window or door so the bat would automatically fly out. This seemed perfectly rational, but seeing
the bat on my wall made rationality moot.
Luckily,
I had a broom pretty close to where I was sitting, since earlier I had planned
to sweep the floor and that didn’t happen.
As I observed the bat, I realized that it was moving very slowly because
it KNEW it was supposed to be hibernating and not hanging out on my living room
wall like a wall safe. I figured that I
could knock it down with the broom and then sweep it out the door. So I very slowly reached for the broom, got
my hand around the handle, and prepared to lift it up. However, I had no
foreshadowing of the events to come. Such
as the bat sensing my movement, and then spreading its 7-foot pterodactyl wings
and taking flight!
When
this happened I did what any other person would do under the
circumstances: I screamed like a little
girl, dropped the broom and started running around the living room, waving my
hands around my head to keep the bat from landing! This woke up the cats who thought I was
playing some kind of new game. They saw
me running, saw the bat flying, and then they started trying to chase the
bat. So now I not only had to keep the pre-historic
Jurassic pterodactyl bat from setting up a condo in my hair, but I also had to
keep from stepping on the cats.
At
some point during this scene from a horror movie, I remembered that Kitty was in
her room. All I had to do was make it there,
and she’d do something about the bat because she’s fearless! She’s a warrior! She’s the great and powerful Kitty! So I headed in the direction of her room: but
just like in the movie Poltergeist, all of a sudden the hall elongated and the
door got further away! Now I was
hysterical, running down the hall until I finally managed to get to the
door. I turned the handle: it was
locked! So I pounded on the door,
screaming her name. “Kitty! Kitty!”
I
heard her voice on the other side. “Who is it?”
“It’s
your mother!” I yelled. “Let me in!”
“What’s
going on out there?” SHE STILL HADN’T
UNLOCKED THE DOOR!
“There’s
a bat out here!!”
“What
do you mean a bat? It’s winter and
they’re hibernating.”
“Open
the freakin’ door!”
Finally
she opened the door and I fell inside her room.
“Mom, are you sure it’s a bat?”
“Yes
I’m sure. Can you take care of it?”
“Of
course I can. You stay here and
rest.” She put on her leopard print
slippers and a safari hat (don’t ask), grabbed her butterfly net and out the
bedroom door she went as I huddled in a heap on the floor by her bed. I kept a fearful eye on the little slit under
her door in case the predator managed to subdue my daughter and came looking
for me again!
I
never heard any noise, but she came back a few minutes later. “All set mom.
You’re safe now.”
“What
did you do with it?”
She
looked at me like I was simple. “I took
it outside and let it go.”
“You
let it go??? So it can come back??”
“It’s
not going to come back.”
“Yes
it is and then what will I do?”
“Mom,
it won’t come back. Sheesh, what do you
want to do: move?”
My
eyes lit up and I literally grabbed her and shook her. “Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do! We’ll move!
We don’t even need to pack: let’s just get in the car and go!”
There
was a decided look of alarm on her face.
“Calm down! We are not
moving! I’ll make you a cup of tea so
you’ll feel better.”
“Tea,
yes, okay. Thank you Kitty. I don’t know
what I would have done if you hadn’t been here.”
So
she made me a cup of her special witch’s brew tea (again, don’t ask) and tucked
me into my own bed like the good daughter she is. However, for the next 2 weeks, I slept with
all the lights on and with one eye open, just in case…
And
that is why Kitty will always be my roommate! But I wonder: how does she feel about it? :)
