Sleepless Nights - Not What I Bargained For...

Let me start off by saying that Jim is out of town. Normally this is not a problem for me as far as sleeping goes. I’m not the type that’s nervous to stay alone. However, last night was a different story and it would have been nice to have him at hand.

It was quite a night.

First, I woke up around 1:00 am for my first potty break of the evening. For some reason I decided to see what my cats were up to. I found Sophie sitting in the middle of the main hall staring at the window in the top of our front door. She looked like she was howling at the moon. I finally spotted the catalyst for her paralysis – it was a moth. Then I joyfully discovered it was on the INSIDE. So I tried to open the door for it to go outside but it just flew up to the ceiling and wouldn’t budge.

Back to bed I went.

About an hour later I woke suddenly to what sounded like a hissing/scratching/screaming sound. It was a horrible sound. My first thought was that Sophie was really going after that moth and making a spectacle about it. As I came more into consciousness, I realized the sound was coming from outside my bedroom window. So now I’m thinking that a stray cat is at our back door hissing at Sophie. Bailey was sitting in the bedroom window (breaking the rules as usual).

So I venture out to the living room and see Sophie staring out the sliding door. Outside is an opossum. First of all – YUCK! It is on top of a second opossum which is slightly smaller than the first. Mind you, this is right outside between the living room door and my bedroom window, almost against the house. In fact they were under the grill. My new thought is that it’s a momma opossum trying to transport a younger opossum.

Wrong. Oh so very wrong!

Opossum #1 was viciously ending the life of opossum #2. It was clamped down on its neck just squeezing the life out of it; jerking its body in ferocious execution. I was HORRIFIED!!! I tried knocking on the glass; opening and shutting the slider – anything to scare this guy away. Then I start to worry that he’ll leave the dead body on my patio. This is why I got married…so that my husband could deal with that kind of stuff. But he’s not here. What am I going to do with an opossum carcass?

Sophie is pretty upset by all this too as she starts pacing around the living room – kind of walking in circles. Not sure she wants to watch; yet can’t pull herself away.

15 minutes later I finally decide to try to go back to bed. I figure I’ll shut my window and if I have to I’ll turn on the TV to drown out any noise. But by the time I reach my window, this murderer starts dragging his victim across the patio. It drags it through my pots and knocks one over. It makes its way across the yard until it’s too dark for me to see. I just hope he doesn’t dump the body in my yard. I really don’t want to find that later.

I try going to sleep but just can’t. I kill some time on the computer. Watch some TV and finally shut down at about 3:00am.

This time I don’t know what time it was, but I was awakened by another horrible sound – my cat puking. Wonderful. They never puke. Maybe Bailey was expressing his disgust over the crime scene and couldn’t hold his cookies any more. Cat puke is always lovely to clean up.

I know pregnancy is supposed to prepare you for the sleepless nights, but this is ridiculous. Must I really be exposed to creatures of the night upsetting my household?

Here’s to hoping for a more peaceful night tonight…