The monster under the bed

If you have been reading my blog at all, you know I have two beloved kitties named Sophie and Storm. They bring us unending joy, snuggles love and laughter.

 We have had Miss Sophie since she was 10 weeks old, She is beautiful half manx white calico. Her mommy had no tail and none of her brothers or sister did either, for some unknown reason she was born with a tail, She was so beautiful when we first saw her I couldn't help but bring her home. She has been brought up to believe she is a princess ever since.  She is the smartest cat I have ever seen. She has even taught herself to fetch like a dog. She is also the most loyal creature I have ever met. A trait of manx cats is they tend to choose one person in their family to claim as their person. Miss Sophie has chosen me. She never leaves my side.  Never. I can't even go to the bath room with out her, when I leave the house she waits by the door until I get home. Sometimes she falls asleep and does not see me leave the room when she wakes up she cries until she finds me. She is a little needy. She also does not sleep like a cat. She sleeps on her back , or stretched out on her tummy with all her feet straight out from her body.

 If Sophie was a human she would probably be the female equivalent of Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory.

 Even though we have had the same bed for her whole life, the night before last night Sophie noticed there was an under the bed. When she noticed this, she decided there was also a monster under the bed.

 It was about one in the morning, John boy and I had been in bed for about a half an hour. I was almost asleep , but not quite there. It was a pretty normal evening, we spent it watching movies on Netflix and relaxing when we went to bed, the kitties did their usual routine. They came to bed with us, they seem to have an rule whichever makes it to the best first, sleeps at the foot of the bed. The other takes the floor. We are not sure why they do this but they do it every night. Before they settle though, they need their cuddles, then they go to their respective places to sleep. Last night Storm got the bed first, and with a bit of an annoyed flick of her tail, Sophie got some love and left the bed.

 We are not sure what scared her so badly, John boy thinks it was him moving his feet. All we know if there was a loud scramble and scratching on the hard wood floor.

 It was so loud John and I both thought that Storm had jumped down and was picking a fight with his sister. I turned on the light to see Storm blinking sleepily at me on the end of the bed. Sophie how ever was puffed up twice her normal size and was carefully approaching the space under our bed. Her eyes were as big as saucers and she was terrified.

 If you have a cat you have probably seen the whole jump four feet in the air thing cats do when the encounter something strange for the first time.  Our first thought was that there was actually something under the bed. I made john check because the idea of a large spider or a mouse in bed with me was not appealing.  John checked and  swore there was nothing there. The light was turned off and we attempted to sleep. John succeeded but I did not.

 Sophie would not calm down, she kept approaching the bed and then scrambling away across the hardwood floor as fast as she could go.  I am 40 years old, I outgrew monsters long ago. BUT this was not normal even for Miss Sophie.

  I finally could not take it any more , my imagination was running wild on me , she was freaking me out and all sorts of nut job stuff was going through my head, everything from large snakes to big mice and the worst was big spiders, We can get really big ones here. Our second night in this house one very large one ran across our bedroom floor it was so big I thought it was a mouse when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. John had trouble squishing it, because it was so large.  I really have issues with eight legged creatures. Doesn't matter how tiny they are I can't handle them and big ones terrify me.

 Sophie was so upset but she wasn't backing down. Finally she managed to crawl halfway under the bed and stayed there for 5 minutes hissing. Yep I wasn't going to sleep...I don't have an internal off switch like John boy. He sleeps through everything. While this was happening he didn't hear a thing. It was freaking me out, even if it is all in her head, Sophie thinks there is a monster under my bed. And that is enough for me. I got up, yanked Sophie out from under the bed and headed to the kitchen, I went to the bathroom and gave my self a pep talk in the mirror. At 2 am in the dark, things are never what they seem especially when you have a freaked out cat telling you something is off.

 Sophie had already headed back to the bedroom determined to do battle with whatever had freaked her out. I went in and got her again, and did my best to calm her down. I made some popcorn and watched a few episodes of Raising Hope with her clinging to my lap. After about and hour and half she seemed calmed down and I was able to go back to bed. The rest of the night I kept having nightmares of things crawling out from under our bed skirt and crawling over me. Every time I woke up there was Sophie still trying to figure out what was under the bed.

 Once morning came she was still no better, I didn't have time to investigate further. I woke up late and was almost late to log in for work. With me stationary in the office Sophie abandoned her quest and joined me in her usual space at work right beside me.

 On my break I decided to find out what was under there. I went into my bedroom armed with a broom and a can of raid... Just in case. I lifted the bed skirt with care and shone a flashlight under there. I discovered Sophie's monster. There it was among several dust bunnies..... a sock. There was nothing else under there. As I pulled it out to show it to my poor neurotic cat, she ran away. She still wont go back in the bedroom. She will get over it. And I had a good giggle over how I let her make me lose my mind for a night. 

 I wouldn't trade my crazy silly kitty for anything. 

Memories, The litter box story

    Five years ago my world changed forever. My youngest son Christopher passed away. It was very sudden as he was not sick or anything like that. Chris was only 10 years old. He was playing and got hurt, and then he was gone.

   No mother is prepared to bury her child. It took me a long time to think of him with out bursting into tears. Slowly over time, with a lot of love and patience from my family and my friends I have come to a place where I can think of him not on the day he died but of who he was when he lived.

    

   Christopher was an amazing child in my eyes. Now I know what you are thinking, every mom says that, but Chris as we called him was different. He had a the gift of getting along with everyone. Nobody was " different " in his eyes. He loved everybody and they loved him. 

  He made us laugh. Sometimes it was intentional, sometimes as you will see in this story it was not. If you know me personally, you most likely have heard this story before. If you are just meeting me through this blog, I hope you will enjoy this silly cherished memory of ours.

  Chris was six years old and Brent ,who at the time was my oldest son at home, Brent was 10. I was a single mom and had been a single mom since Chris was about 2. Being a single mom is sometimes tough. You make choices you wish you didn't have too. One of these choices is to work outside my home. At the time there was not a lot of legitimate work from home opportunities out there. So I did what I had too. I was working for a company that helped families who had a disaster of some kind like a flood that damaged their home or a fire that damaged their home. My job was to clean and restore any of their possessions that we could.  The job allowed me to arrive home about an hour after my children. At the time I could  not afford a babysitter for only an hour, so my kids were home by themselves for that  time. 

  They liked coming home and having the house to themselves. It made them feel all grown up. They also had some rules to follow, They were not to answer the door or telephone. They were to do their homework if they had any. Brent was to change the cat's litter box and Chris was supposed to feed the cat.

  

  The cat was an orange and white tom cat the boys had found as a stray. He was called Screech. He earned that name. He was very affectionate and whenever he saw you or wanted your attention he would meow at you very loudly until you talked to him. This is where he got his name. Screech had one bad habit. If his litter box was not to his standards he would do his business in the bath tub. In order to keep Screech both boys had pinky swore to look after all his needs. Pinky swearing is serious business to a child, my children believed horrible things would happen if they broke this kind of oath. Being their mom and I knew this and I used it as much as I could .

  I arrived home on a wintry day to find Brent sitting in the corner on the floor holding Screech (who was loving the attention) and rocking him crying.

I was alarmed. "Brent, what is wrong?" I asked.

Brent looked up at me "Its screech he is very sick, he may even die!" 

Screech, at this moment was laying on his back in Brent's lap all four feet straight up, kneading the air while he purred loudly, as Brent rubbed his belly and cried. He certainly looked healthy to me. 

"Brent hunny, why do you think he is sick? He looks pretty happy to me."  I picked the cat up from his lap and looked him over and could find nothing wrong. Why was Brent so upset?

 It took me a few moments to get Brent calmed down enough to understand what he was saying, 

After a few moments he explained. "We came home from school and I wanted to do my chore right away so Screech didn't poop in the bathtub, I went to the bathroom, then I went to clean his box. Mom it must have hurt him , he must be sick, He seems ok, but he can't be!!!" He then proceeded to begin wailing again.  At this point I still didn't know why Brent thought the cat was dying.  Brent was now begging the cat not to die. Screech's response was to roll over and present his belly again for Brent to stroke.

Finally Brent said for me to go look into the litter box and see for myself. Keep in mind I had just gotten home from work , I was tired, hungry and the last thing I wanted to do was look at a dirty litter box. But if I was to figure out what all the drama was about I had to go and look. Up until this point, I hadn't noticed that Chris was no where in sight. Strange. If the boys believed their beloved cat was sick , why wasn't Chris here crying with Brent? I didn't have much time to figure it out, I was getting short on patience and I wanted to sort this all out. So I proceeded down the hall to the little utility room where the litter box was kept.  There was nothing in there except a freezer and the litter box so the door was always open so Screech had access, I turned on the light and looked at the box, It took a few moments for me to realize exactly what I was looking at..... Well I could see what had upset Brent.
I was not looking at cat feces,  If I had been looking at cat feces, then Brent would have been right, our cat would have definitely had a problem. What I was looking at was human poop... In the cat's litter box.

  I began to put two and two together , Brent was still in the kitchen with the cat, crying so it wasn't him, I knew that it was not me. That leaves only one other person. A certain 6 year old who is now conspicuously absent. I went looking for him.

 He wasn't in the living room or kitchen, I checked the boys bedroom first. I looked in the closet, nothing. I looked under Brent's bed, nothing, Then I heard a large sniff coming from under Chris' bed. I got down on the floor and lifted the dust cover, huddled as far away as the wall would allow, was one very miserable 6 year old.

  "Hey buddy, what are you doing way back there?" I asked. No answer. " Come on kiddo, come out of there and let me see you" .
 " Is Brent with you?" He asked
 " Nope, he is in the kitchen with Screech. Why don't you come out and give Mommy a hug, I missed you today." I answered.
 Slowly he wriggled out and climbed into my lap, He was obviously miserable, Although I had an idea what was going on, I decided to let him tell me.
" Can you tell me what is wrong?" I asked.
His big brown eyes filled with tears.
 " Oh Mommy, I did a really bad thing!" And he started to cry.
" Well why don't you tell Mommy about it."
" You can't tell Brent! pinky swear!!" He stuck out his little pinky finger. Well now, this was serious. I stuck out my pinky finger and wrapped it around his, Chris didn't know that Brent was peeking around the doorway listening to us, I would threaten him not to tell Chris he knew later.. " I swear" I promised." Now tell Mommy what you did."

He looked away from me, "I pooped in the litter box. Brent thinks it was Screech, He is gonna kill me!" And then he started to cry again. Now that I knew what had happened and the cat was in no danger, I tried really hard not to laugh, I was also confused, "Why did you poop in the litter box Chris?" I never dreamed this was a question I would ask my child.

"How did you poop in the litter box?" I could not fit my head around it.

" Brent was in the bathroom and I really needed to go, I didn't want to poop in my pants. I am NOT a baby!" he declared firmly " But I couldn't wait! then I thought of the litter box, I pushed Screech out of the way and squatted down and just did it. It was a 'mergency Mommy!"

He looked so serious, all I could do was hug him and tell him it was ok. And when he was out earshot, and couldn't see, I collapsed on my bed laughing as hard as I could.

 The day was saved. The cat would live.  Christopher cleaned  the litter box instead of Brent. Brent made it clear to Chris he had heard everything and he was NOT cleaning that up. I also heard my oldest inform his little brother that it was pretty smart to think quick that way, and that he never would have thought about that. Truthfully neither would have I. I made a point to explain to Chris that he should probably not do that again. Next time he should ask his brother to let him go first.
  Chris smiled at me and said" Don't worry Mommy I won't Screech didn't like it much he looked at me awful funny"

I hope you enjoyed this little memory of ours, It was a silly thing that we still laugh about today. Have your kids ever done something strange that you laughed about later?