The Wild, Wild East

My freshman year of college my friend Lauren and I wanted to go somewhere together for spring break. But unfortunately since we were at two different schools our spring breaks didn’t coincide. So instead she came out east for a few days. While she was here we spent a few nights at my parent’s house in New Hampshire.

A little background on my parent’s house…it’s a gorgeous house that sits on 10 acres of land, most of which is woods. The house is very old and they have since redone every room. But at the time of this story my bedroom had yet to be ‘fixed up’ and the window, which faced the woods, wasn’t sealed very well and had a hole in the screen. This hole was my nemesis; it let all sorts of bugs in during the summer. I do not do well bugs, I was raised a city girl.

(my parent's house)

Anyway, back to the story.

So Lauren’s last night in town we both slept in my double bed. At about 3:30am I woke up because I felt something moving on my back. I slowly looked over my shoulder and found myself face to face with a black cat!

As quickly as I could, I flipped back on to my stomach and tried to stealthily wake up Lauren without disrupting the feline, “LAUREN!! LAUREN!!” I felt her starting to wake up and continued my campaign. “LAUREN! LAUREN! WAKE UP!” She sleepily replied, “whaat?”

“what. is. on. my. back.”
“What?”

“what. is. on. my. back.”
How she answered the question this time is up for debate. In hindsight it does make more sense that she said “what?”, but at 3:30am with a cat on my back the answer I heard was, “CAT!” With that confirmation I sprinted out of the room as fast as I possibly could and burst in to my parent’s room down the hall.

“MOM! WAKE UP!! THERE’S A CAT IN MY ROOM!”

Terrified, my mom shot up out of bed. As I frantically explained the situation to her, Lauren, like any trusting friend, figured if I just sprinted out of the room at full speed there must be a good reason. Beyond confused, she ran into the hall to see what was going on and was greeted with my demands, “Close the door!! Trap it in there!!!” Again, Lauren trustingly obliged, albeit still very confused.

Realizing I was seriously freaking out, my mom got up to search my room for the cat that “came in through the hole in the screen”; I remained safely in my parent’s room. My stepdad rolled over and mumbled, “What’s going on?” I told him there was a wild cat in my room and I could still feel where it had been standing on my back. He simply said, “ah whatevah,” rolled over and went back to sleep. Thanks for the concern Beano!

Shockingly the search was inconclusive. Lauren and I were told to sleep downstairs in the guest room until the search could continue at a more reasonable hour.

By the time we got down there we realized that the “cat” was actually Lauren just rolling into me in her sleep. Even still, we figured it was safer to spend the night in the guest room…just in case.

After that, redoing my room got moved up a little on the To Do List (at least fixing the window did). And Lauren and I made sure there was always PLENTY of room between us when we shared a bed.