Do you stand and fight or turn and take flight when given an awful fright?
Beth had been cat-sitting for our friend Sue for several days when Gracie took over... On Monday evening after work, she went over to feed and settle Willie for the night. While rinsing out the kitty food bowls, Grace heard someone or something moving around upstairs…after a beat, she realized it wasn’t Sue’s cat making the noise…
Flight, definitely.
Gracie screamed and ran out of the door she came in, jumped in her car, locked the doors, started it (to enable a fast getaway in the event someone followed her outside) and called for reinforcements…
Beth and I quickly drove six doors down and met an obviously frightened Grace in the driveway…
“Mom, I don’t know what’s going on…I was getting Wilson’s bowls ready and all of a sudden I heard a loud crash above the kitchen…I knew it wasn’t her, so I got the heck out of there!!
I pulled open the storm door and hollered inside… “Hello!! We’re coming in so you need to go somewhere else!” I stepped over the threshold and began systematically turning on every light on the first level, making sure each room was in order. Before heading up the stairs, I grabbed an old golf club from the umbrella stand by the front door, just in case…
I walked into the master bedroom and flipped on the light switch…nothing happened. After a few anxious seconds, I stepped over to the nightstand and turned on the bedside lamp, glanced around and saw nothing unusual…until I moved toward the dresser…
“Oh Crap!!!”
Straddling the top of the bureau mirror was a huge, puffed-up cat that was absolutely NOT my friend’s pet…
We stared each other down for a couple of minutes, as I tried to decide what to do; finally, I edged forward…big mistake… The errant trespasser freaked out, leapt from its perch, streaked across the room and scaled the plantation shutters; it paused at the top long enough to realize Beth was in the vicinity, so it jumped down and tore back past me into the bathroom, where it promptly ran into the wall. It bounced off, turned and scrabbled up the vanity, leveling everything in its path before dashing through the closet and ramming into another wall as it tried to avoid Gracie… It finally ran underneath the desk, dazed and bleeding slightly from its mouth…
I believe it must have knocked itself senseless, because it allowed me to cautiously approach with an old flannel blanket; I scooped the cat up and held tight as it tried to flail free of my grasp. I made my way down the steps and out the door… I carefully uncovered the scared animal once outside; it promptly fled across the front yard.
I’ve heard of stories like this before but always assumed the tales of terror were slightly exaggerated… Not anymore; I don’t know who was more afraid…
As I’ve replayed the scene in my mind for a week now, I asked myself just how many times have I acted like that crazy cat? Running around in circles, lost and confused, angry beyond words, desperately searching for a way out, feeling trapped and hemmed in, too scared to move and too scared to stay put, ultimately attacking those simply trying to help?
Far too many times to count in the last four plus years…
Wishing you many blessings…tg
Tammy will update her blog twice weekly…
