The Visitor

It was late at night and the house was dark and quiet. The girls were asleep, and I was in bed reading a ghost story, when I heard it. It was a horrible sound... the low guttural, muffled meow of my cat. That in itself was very strange... she rarely meows. But when she does, it's not the nice soft meow of most cats. Her meow sounds more like a cow in pain. Only tonight, the meow was even more horrible, compounded by the fact that I was reading a ghost story.

Autumn jumped up on my bed, and I noticed by the dim light of my reading light she had something in her mouth. This was the second strange thing. Our cat has numerous toy mice around the house, but she's never shown an interest in them. This time she was holding one in her mouth. "Whatcha got, kitty?" I asked, calling her forward. She dropped her toy mouse... and in a flash it scurried across the foot of my bed! And to be honest, I'm surprised my scream didn't wake my girls. I don't know who was more scared... me or the mouse!

For a while I just sat in bed shaking, afraid to get out for fear of stepping on the thing. Finally I got up the nerve and quickly made the bed (to be sure there were no little lumps under the covers), then proceeded to turn on all the lights in the house. I'd heard mice usually come out at night, so I figured I'd discourage this critter from running across my path. Then I went through the house and cleaned up all the jackets and blankets left scattered around. I didn't want to give this little guy any convenient hiding places.

Finally in the wee hours of the morning I was able to calm down enough to go back to bed. But before going to bed I told my kitty that the next time she decides to catch a mouse, please dispose of it. And please, please don't bring it onto my bed!

Throughout the night I heard scratching noises in my closet, and the next morning we found a little hole in the wall where the mouse had escaped. We saw it once more that day, then didn't see or hear anything after that. We figured our kitty must have scared the poor little critter away. There was no evidence of a mouse anywhere in the house (fortunately no droppings or food chewed up), so we thought that was the end of it.

Nine Days Later.

Around 2:30 in the morning my husband and I were awakened by our cat making a very loud, horrible sounding meow. She was in our room, and my husband began calling her to us. In my sleep muddled mind I thought, "don't call her, she might have a mouse!" I mentioned this to my husband, and he turned on his flashlight, but didn't see anything. Then he got out of bed and looked on the floor in front of her... and sure enough, there was a mouse on the floor. A very dead mouse. I asked if he was sure it was real, and not one of her toys. He assured me this was real. He left to get a garbage bag to dispose of the pitiful creature, and my cat started batting at it, trying to get it to move! "Autumn, stop!" I didn't want to take any chances that the thing was just in shock, and would regain consciousness and scurry across my floor again. My wonderful husband disposed of the mouse that night, and we haven't seen or heard any more little visitors in our house.

The end.
(At least, I sincerely hope this is the end.)