There was a mewling noise coming from the bathroom. I was half asleep in bed as I heard it, and lay wrapped up in my blankets trying to figure out what the noise might be. It sounded like a cat, but how could it be a cat when there was no cat in my room or bathroom. At least, there was no way for one to have slipped in, the door as closed and latched. The meow came again, more pronounced. It was as if the speaker was sitting in front of a Rosetta Stone screen and learning cat, and getting better at it.
“Meow. Mew. Mew. Rowl-l-l-l. Meow.”
A whole sentence of cat –or maybe a paragraph. I’m not an expert on feline grmmar. The noise roused me and I swung my legs over the side of the bed and switched to my chair. The meow sounded again and I heeled into the bathroom. No cat. I suppose it might have been in the cupboard, but I doubted it. Then the meo sounded right in my ear. I looked over and saw the window, slightly open, with the cat’s black nose and golden eyes peering through the opening. “Meow.” she said again.
“That was redundant.” I chided. “I’m here. Now, what do you want?” I wondered if the cat expected me to let her in through the window. That was not going to happen because I wasn’t about to go outdoors and remove the screen. The cat looked at me and then hopped from the windowsill to the decking and I heard her foot patter headed towrds the bedroom deck. I moved through my room to the french doors leading outside, twisted the lock and opened the door. The cat came in, a speedy black fluff ball. I closed and relocked the door and looked at the cat. I watched it as it investigated the underside of the bed, pulled open an unlatched closet door and went inside. After a moment, she reappeared and moved off the check out the bathroom. I watched her all the way through the exercise, wondering what she might be thinking and what this ritual might have stemmed from.
Apparently finished with her inspection tour, she walked to the bedroom door and meowed again. She touched her paw to the door as if to indicate her meaning. I opened the door and let her out. She trotted off towards the living room and the rest of the house. I crawled back into bed and spent a while trying to think like a cat, but gave up when I figured that I didn’t know how a cat thought, so how could I be thinking like a cat? However, I surprised myself with the amount of cat lore I possessed, considering that my wife is the real cat person in the house. Of course, I have no clue as to whether my cat facts are accurate, but they make sense to me.
“Meow.”
I sat up and looked around. After a moment, I heard the cat again. I got myself back up and went back to the bathroom, and sure enough, there was the cat again. Grousing, I rolled back to bed. It didn’t take long for the cat to repeat its request but I ignored it. I’d just let the cat in, I wasn’t going to do it again. The cat meowed again, and then settled into a more plaintive squeak. It sounded so forlorn and pathetic that I swapped back into my chair and rolled to my back door and unlocked it. As soon as I opened it, the cat zipped in and began to reinspect the room. Events replayed themselves almost exactly, which found me a couple minutes later back in bed.
“Meow.”
“Son of a bi…” I threw off the covers and with a snarl went and opened the back door. Again the cat flew in and began its room inspection. I grabbed it up and cradled it over to the door and put the cat in the hall, giving it access to the house. I shut my door and went to the bathroom and shut the window. Lights off, I closed the bathroom door, shut off my room lights and went back to bed.
“Growl! Hiss!” The cat was obviously upset by my closing off of his means of comminication, and sat on the window sill treating the neighborhood to a tantalizing selection of feline epithets.
I rolled over and closed my eyes.
