Things That Go Bump . . .

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a very light sleeper. 

Last night I ended up falling asleep on the bed with one of the children. 

Waking up past midnight I popped downstairs to help hubby finish locking up (he’d also fallen asleep!).

By the time I got back to bed half an hour or so later you can imagine I wasn’t that sleepy, but tried.

I lay down and after tossing and turning a while and drifting in and out of sleep I heard a noise on the patio.  It sounded like a snail crunching hedgehog so I looked out of the window.  Not being able to see anything, I went to open the bathroom window as this sets the patio light off.

As I stepped on to the landing I was aware of floorboards creaking elsewhere upstairs.  As everyone was asleep I thought ‘mmmm’. 

I walked towards my daughters bedroom (who wasn’t in there) and heard footsteps running away.

I put the light on and walked through to a little box room off hers that leads to the roof of our utility.  I remembered that we had left the window wide open to get a through draft during the day.

There was the culprit, a neighbouring cat who had decided to take shelter in the bedroom rather than be out all night.  I leaned out of the window (in all my glory) said hello (as you do) and stroked him so as not to frighten him.

I then closed the window.

I walked back to the bathroom to continue my initial mission of checking out what was on the patio.  I set the light off, went into my bedroom and leaned out of the window.

I didn’t see the hedgehog or whatever had been making the noise but as I looked across to our utility roof, the cat was sitting there rolling around all happy-like on the edge of the utility roof.  I really held my breath as his bum was literally hanging over the edge.

I could imagine the conversation with his owner.

"Oh hi, it’s your neighbour two doors down.  It’s about your cat.  I found him in our house last night, stroked him, sent him so doolally so that he rolled off our utility in a happy stupor.  Sorry about that."

Anyway, he went off on his merry way, I settled down only to hear more noise outside.  This time it was the pitter patter of rain.

I shot out of bed and ran downstairs (this time with my dressing gown on) to fetch in a load of childrens toys that we’d left on the patio.  I remember going to bed thinking ‘it won’t rain tonight, I’ll leave them there’. 

I won’t listen to myself again - and I’ll make sure I shut the window tonight!

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