Rodents?? You've Got to be Kidding.

I woke up this morning to the sound of scratching behind the walls.  It was disturbing - it reminded me of the alien-invasion movie I watched part of on tv yesterday before I was creeped into turning it off.  Geoff had already left for work so I knew I was going to have to deal with this by myself...and I'm not good at this kind of thing.  Though I generally don't use profanity, I can tell you that my thoughts at that moment were not pure.

I sighed, then sat up.  The noise location was right behind Geoff's armoire.  Great, I thought, now I've got to move a five hundred pound piece of solid wood furniture before I can even do anything - not that I knew what I was going to do once the armoire was moved.  I pictured holes in the wall of the bedroom that had just been repainted last winter;  worse than that, I envisioned being the one to hack through the wall myself with an axe that I don't think we own; I could see in my mind's eye a dozen or so racoons or squirrels jumping through the hole into the bedroom and me standing on the bed screaming and thinking 'ok now what, you idiot?'

Even in the heat of the moment I was amazed at how much could go through my head in the couple of seconds it took me to get up from my bed and walk towards the armoire.  As I got closer, I could see that the drawer at the bottom of the armoire was open - something that had been hidden from view from my prone position.  It was Geoff's sock drawer, and I guessed that he'd simply forgotten to close it when he was getting ready for work.  I bent to push the drawer in and the scratching intensified.  The drawer was stuck so I pushed harder against the blockage.  Then, I dropped the drawer and jumped away from it because now a loud screech was coming from the wall behind - oh no, wait, I thought - it's coming from the armoire.

Then I started to laugh - a bit hysterically but mostly with relief that there would be no wall breakage today.  My almost-sixteen-year-old, geriatric cat had climbed into the sock drawer and had somehow wedged herself over the back of the drawer and into the tiny space behind.  Now, hearing my voice (well, my laugh), her screeching and scratching changed to a pleading whine...it was time for a rescue operation.  I pulled the heavy drawer out of its fittings and, knowing that Frodo is a proud old feline whose feelings are easily hurt, I tried hard not to smile as she sheepishly hopped down and stalked out of the room in a stiff-legged walk that was meant to project a dignity that it is hard to hang on to when you've just been rescued from behind a sock drawer.