Just a word of warning..Beware of cats bearing gifts! Never! I mean NEVER trust a cat to bring a gift that is most delightful! Last night at just about 11pm, I heard a noise. Thump, thump, thump, rattle, rattle. Something was prancing around on the rooftop. Nothing to worry about! Son's bedroom is upstairs and his windows are accessible from the roof. Whenever Ms Put, the cat, decides she wants inside, she will climb onto the roof and rattle his window. He will open the window, she enters and then meanders down the stairs and into the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. This happens almost nightly so the noise was no big surprise tonight. What happened after he opened the window was a big surprise however!
Boom..Boom..Boom..thumpety..thumpety..boom! Oh my goodness! A loud noise resonated throughout the house. Of course everything sounds much louder in the middle of the night, but this was something that I had never heard before. Perhaps the previous sounds were not Ms Put, but someone trying to break into the house! I sneaked from the living room, down the hall and into the dining room..all the while wondering just what I would do if I encountered an intruder. Maybe I should have grabbed something to use as a weapon..you know..just in case I had to boink someone on the noggin. A little late to think of that now! I peeped into the darkness. "Son??? Is that you? Is everything alright?" I asked. He was standing at the foot of the stairs. Stretching around the corner without leaving the step, he flipped on the kitchen light. I noticed that he had the strangest look on his face. I took a step toward him wondering just what was wrong. "WAIT!" he said emphatically. I stopped in my tracks.."What?? What is wrong?" By this time, I was quite jittery..expecting some monster to jump out at me and little did I know that I was not too far off with that assumption.
"Son" I asked "was that Ms Put making all of that noise?" The cat was sitting on the stairs by his feet. "Ummm..yeah." he deadpanned. "What in the world was she doing to make all that racket?" I asked. "Ummm..she brought a friend." Now that is just what I needed..another cat! "A friend? She brought in another cat?" He shook his head..by this time I was getting braver and a mite annoyed at his lack of answers. "Well...what????" I started toward him again, forgetting his warning. He merely pointed at the floor and said "There!"
There...there in the middle of my dining room floor sat the largest rat I have seen in some time! This thing was HUGE! "How did that get in here!" I more or less screeched. So he told the story.. When he opened the window to let her inside, she brought this "gift" in with her. She jumped into the room with a HUGE RAT in her mouth! She plopped the rat in the middle of his floor and proceeded to play with it! This was bad enough but......IT WAS NOT DEAD! The still-kicking rat tried to get away..Ms Put pounced on it. She batted at it a bit and then grabbed the rat and tumbled down the stairs. That was the noise I had heard! Cat and rat bumpety-bumping down the stairs! Oh, my goodness! Now said monstrous rat lay on the middle of my dining room floor, Ms Put sat cleaning herself and Son stood looking bewildered. "DO SOMETHING!!!" I yelled, "HURRY!" The rat's beady eyes were starting to focus on any escape route. This thing was gigantic! Son hurried to the laundry room and grabbed an ice cream bucket. An ice cream bucket..what did he plan on doing with that??? He cautiously stepped toward the gargantuan rat..the tail twitched.."Uhhh, Mom..it is not dead, yet." Well...duh...why did he think I was yelling at him to get rid of the thing! He slammed the bucket down on top of the rat! I felt so much safer once the monster was under the bucket even though the tail still poked out the side. The tail twitched again..Ms Put who was now finished preening herself..looked at the tail sticking out from under the bucket. She pounced on the tail! "Son! Hold down the bucket!" I could just imagine that bucket flying across the room freeing the jailed rat. We were not going through that again!
Then came the problem of what to do with a rat under a bucket! I was quite sure that this monster could eat that entire piece of plastic in a few seconds. I wanted this thing out of my house! Ms Put was still batting at the wiggly tail and Son still held the bucket..it was up to me to use a bit of ingenuity in disposing of the ogre in the ice cream bucket! I remembered how when they were still kids, I had showed them the method of catching a bug in a glass and using a paper to trap it. I handed Son a piece of cardboard. He slid it under the bucket. The rat stayed between the bucket and cardboard and was transported outside. Ms Put was almost outdone with us..her gift had not been accepted graciously. She had been snubbed! Once outside, she grabbed her rat and killed it. There laid the dead rat. Ugh! Son and I went back inside once the extraction had been made. The heart stopped racing..all was back to normal. Then I heard...thump, thump, thump...rattle, rattle, rattle..Ms Put was on the rooftop trying to get back inside! "OH NO, SON! DO NOT OPEN THAT WINDOW!!!"
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