Jackson is our cat, he is a Maine Coone and quite large. He is quite vocal when he has something important to tell you such as “there is no food in my bowl” or “get up, there is no open window so I can get out side” or my personal favourite: “hey come and look and see what I killed for you.”
Last night I am lying reading – it is nearly 2am, and Jackson comes in to the room. He makes his meowing/barking sound and then goes under the bed. Judging by his movements, I know that he is not alone and has either brought a friend who is alive, or is just this side of dead.
Either way it is 2am, it is dark and he is under my bed with whatever or whom ever he has with him.
I wait a few moments and then start trying to peer under the bed, without actually letting any part of me drape over the side of the bed. It is not working, so I wake Kennith.
<Kennith by the way who is meant to be my protector, has slept through so many sounds in our house that I get up when something makes a noise to go and check on it. I tend to only wake Kennith if I have actually seen a large man in our passage with a machete, and he has ill intentions on his mind.>
Me: Jackson has something and he is under the bed.
Kennith: …..
Me: JACKSON, HAS SOMETHING AND HE IS UNDER THE BED …. WITH IT!
Kennith: What …. what ….. shit, I am sleeping.
Me: Yes, but Jackson has a friend under the bed.
Kennith: It’s nothing, it’s a moth … its nothing, go to sleep.
Me: I don’t think so.
I start flicking a towel under the bed to get Jackson to leave – judging by his reluctance, I assume he is probably playing with something, which means what ever it is must be at least part alive. Jackson is not that into necrophilia.
Many towel flicks later, Jackson does leave – and without his friend.
I look over at Kennith with the tone that clearly says: “Get out of bed, look under the bed and make it go away.”
Kennith finally rolls himself out of the bed, chooses to put on pants – which is great, as I think when you are going to be crawling under the bed to see what creepy crawlies have been brought in, the least you should do is cover your hangy bits.
I am crouched on the bed, waiting for my protector to save the situation.
Kennith turns on the en-suite light and crouches in the en-suite doorway to see if he can see what is under the bed. Our room is quite large, so he is easily about 2 metres away from the edge of the bed and thus not exactly in a prime location to get a fix on what is under the bed.
Kennith squats and squints – always on the balls of his feet – ready in case something jumps out at him. After what I can only describe as a brief glance, he declares: “There is nothing there!” and gets back into bed.
I know there is something under the bed. But I am not going to go under to look – I try to counsel my kids that there aren’t really monsters under the bed, but I start believing other wise in the dead of the night.
Kennith turns the main light off and climbs back in to bed.
I really can’t see anything, but I am too sh*t scared to get out of the bed to crouch on the floor. So I am sort of hanging off the edge of the bed waving my bedside lamp around to try and cast some light into the cavernous depths that are the under of our bed.
I can’t see anything, so settle back down to read. (I know there is something, I just can’t see it, so settling is more, waiting for the beast to pounce.)
The thing that I admire (not necessarily like) is that Kennith is ever the opportunist (and the optimist). He rolls over to me and goes: “Because I sorted the thing out under the bed, can we have sex?”
Me: “No, we are not having sex – and you did not sort the thing out.”
Kennith: “There is nothing there or it was a moth, leave it and go to sleep.”
I know there is something there, and the chances of me going to sleep are nil – I think if it is a little mouse, it is fine, let it just scuttle off and find it’s way out.
Then I hear the click-click-click of nails on our floor boards – which tells me that clearly it is not a moth.
Again, I say to Kennith: “I can hear claws, it is not a fekn moth!”
Kennith: ……..
Click-click-click
Me: “It has nails – can you not hear it!?”
Kennith: ………..
Me: Get out of bed, and SORT it out!
Kennith rolls out of bed again – with great reluctance – and lacks all enthusiasm, he squats to look under the bed – fortunately pants are still on.
Things moved a bit quicker now as the moth turns out to be a mole, who is also trying to get out of the room.
Kennith steps (I would like to say jumped – but I am trying to retain a semblance of his manhood) into the corner and says: “I don’t do moles!” I was sure he was using a rather shrill high pitched voice at this point, but so much was happening, that it is difficult to remember accurately.
Good to know! Which I quickly interpret, using my spidey-sense, to mean that I need to do moles. Kennith argues that I did it the last time and now I have experience, and thus I should do it again.
The mole uses us arguing as a distraction, and tries to make a quick exit from the room and escape down the passage.
This would probably be fine, but he has no where to go and odds are Jackson is going to find him again and then there will be entrails in the passage when we do get up. Picking up a live mole is no fun, but scrapping bit of a dead mole off the passage floor is less ideal.
I try and corner the mole with a towel. When I think he can’t go anywhere, I ask Kennith to just watch him, so that I can go down to the garage to fetch the net.
I go all the way to the garage and return with net – being sure to unlock and relock all doors, and turn off all lights – it is a bit of hike from our room to the garage, so it does take me a bit, and I also had to go into a dark garage all by myself!
I get back and Kennith clearly has gained some testosterone since I left him.
Somehow his shoe has come in to the game, I am not sure how.
The mole is trying to flee down the passage. Kennith is trying to keep the mole at bay – with the shoe – but at the same time sort of doing a Johnny Clegg dance which I interpret to mean that the shoe might have some limitations. While doing his expressive form of dance, he tries to grab Isabelle’s nappy dustbin, which we always leave in the passage when she goes to sleep.
Kennith is bravely trying to keep the mole at bay, and reach for the dustbin without losing ground or eye contact with the mole.
He proceeds to fling the nappies out onto the floor and then attempts to scoop the mole up with the pink dustbin. It sounds easier than it is, but by the looks of things it takes several attempts and some shrieking from Kennith to get mole inside pink dustbin.
All whilst I am standing in the passage in my shortie pajamas with a fishing net.
Mole does finally get in to the dustbin, and then mole is unceremoniously flung out into the backyard.
We finally climb back in to bed.
Kennith snaps at me to put the light off – it must be well after 4am by now. I do switch off the light and there we both lie in the dark.
Kennith of course does suggest that we can both go to sleep quicker if I would just have sex with him <sigh>
Note to self – post ad on gumtree to see if anyone wants a cat! House trained, neutered, sort of feeds itself.
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