"We should get another cat," she said. "It'll be fun," she said.
Skip ahead six months to last night. We got home from the theatre, planning to go to Annapolis Royal this morning for their first ever Pride Parade. Everyone else was going to Halifax for the big parade, but we both hate city traffic and parking, and it's a big corporate-type parade. Annapolis Royal is a tiny little town, and we wanted to support them in holding a Pride parade. The drive is a tad shorter than going to the city, but still close to an hour and a half. So we set the alarm for ten to six, to give us time to get there before the 9:00 start time.
About 3:00 this morning, I was awakened from a sound sleep by a loud crash. As is typical in that situation, I had only the vaguest mental recording of the sound, but I could tell it came from upstairs. I got up, threw on a robe, and went upstairs to investigate. Nothing seemed out of place. Weird. Back to bed.
But not to sleep. When woken up suddenly, it takes me at least two hours to burn off the adrenalin and get back to sleep. So, I am tossing and turning some time later, when there is another loud sound. It matched the first one, but this time, I could identify it as a cat scrabbling to catch something. Oh, great, I thought, we must have a mouse in the house.
This pattern repeated approximately every hour, with the sounds coming from various parts of the house. The final one including the dog complaining loudly about being woken up, probably by a kitty jumping onto her.
Finally, the alarm goes off, with me not having slept since 3:00. We got up, fed the critters, and quickly decided to abort the trip to any parade. Coffee can keep me from falling asleep, but it can't make me alert enough for highway driving if my brain is foggy.
Instead, we went out for breakfast. We are regulars at one restaurant, where the morning waitress knows us. It was "Good morning, ladies. You don't need menus. (She knows our order.) Sit anywhere you like." Coffee - YES!!
After some more investigation, we have concluded that it wasn't a mouse in the house. There is no sign of a mouse, and they tend not to come indoors at this time of year. The culprit seems to bave been a flying beetle, which I rounded up and dispatched. Eric, the new cat, goes nuts when he finds an insect, so it could totally account for his hunting expedition.
Well, okay, at least I have some obligatory on-topic content to justify posting this story: the Pride parades, and being called "ladies" in the restaurant.
