AAAAHHHH!

At a pretty high octave, that's as close as letters come to representing the sound I made in the hutong last night. Dan and I opened the door and were instantly appalled by what smelled like poop somewhere in the hutong. It is not a large place, but whatever the smell was coming from was well hidden (presumably behind the furnace since we still haven't found it). I walked in and flicked on the patio lights the doors to the bedroom and living room were closed, but the bathroom and kitchen doors were open.

Thinking, quite logically of course, that a poop smell might be coming from the bathroom, I stepped up to flick on the light when... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh! I screamed like a little girl. Something rather substantial had run by and hit me in the leg just before I could switch on the light. Not having seen anything, I turned to Dan, panicked. He had this funny look on his face, somewhere between disbelief and amusement. At this point, I don't remember the words exchanged, but he did inform me that it was just a cat, with a look that said, "Why on EARTH would you scream like that about a cat!" Of course, I didn't know it was a cat.

In my life, there have been plenty of bats in the house, and mice and even rats, but never cats. I can assure you though, had I seen what it was and that it was coming, I wouldn't have freaked out like that.

So, the cat scared me. I think, though, that I just might have scared the cat a bit more. It ran for the door, which leads us to believe that's how it must have come in in the first place, but the door was closed. I went to try to open the door, but then, of course, the cat ran the other direction (back onto the patio). It stood for a few seconds on the table, beautiful orange and white hair on end, tail enormous and then whoosh, it ran into the kitchen and as far as possible under the cupboards where it would stay for a good portion of the evening.

At this point, I felt like a real idiot for not having shut the kitchen and bathroom doors before going to open the patio door. All of those times we had a bat in the house haven't prepared me for anything!! I still forget to shut the door! In the hopes that the cat would leave on its own during the night, we left the hutong door open a crack. I insisted on leaving it open because I didn't want to have to torture the cat in the morning to get it out (it had already been in our place for at least a couple of days without food). Unfortunately, I'm paranoid, so leaving the door open meant that I didn't sleep well at all last night. I started awake about every half hour or whenever there was any noise. At a couple different times I got up to see if the cat had left yet so I could shut the door. It wasn't the case.

So, today's been a bit rough. I sort of feel like I have a hangover or something. On the up side, classes were super easy and there were no major happenings after school. I came home, had two sips of red wine and crashed for about an hour. I'd like to just go to sleep now, but I have work to do :-(

So, until the next incident...