Tommy Karr

At sometime after 3:00am this morning I woke up drenched in a frigid dread.  Something was wrong.  What was it?

I sat up, tried to adjust me eyes to the darkness but realized it wasn’t my eyes that were upset.  It was my ears.

Somewhere near me a faint tap-tap-tap was rapping.  I sat perfectly still and listened.  I looked to my left and right, anticipating the two cats to be sitting on either side of me.  They usually lay there for most of the night, usually leaving just before I wake up in anticipating of breakfast.  But neither was there.

But there it was, the tap-tap-tap coming from somewhere in the darkness.

“This is how it happens in scary movies,” I thought to myself.  Suddenly I was thrown back to childhood, waking up in terror and wanting to cry out for an adult to come save me.  But the rational adult inside me told me to shush, that there had to be a reasonable explanation for the frightening tap-tap-tap that was coming from somewhere… beneath me.

Yep, the sound appeared to be coming from under the bed and, even though there was a rational adult in my brain telling me not to worry, I was still unnerved enough to NOT want to look under the bedskirt to see the source of the dreaded tap-tap-tap.

I slowly slipped off the end of the bed, fairly certain that the sound was coming from under the upper-half.  I quietly snuck into the living room, mostly hoping to NOT see either cat there.  If both were on the couch that meant that the tap-tap-tap was caused by something else… something entirely unknown.

One cat, Pinter, looked up at me from the back of the couch and gave a faint “yowl.”

“Shh!” I replied, not wanting him to wake my roommate.  “Where’s you sister?”  He looked perplexed and I, realizing that I was talking to a cat, shook my head and headed back to my room.  The other cat must be under the bed.  Right?

I started to kneel at the edge of the bed, starting to peer under the bedskirt at the… but no.  The rational adult faded quickly and the terrified kid knew that if I pulled up the bedskirt a face would be smiling back at me and I would black out or vanish or both.  So I jumped back onto the bed and thought.  “Zoey?” I whispered, hoping the cat, who I assumed prayed was under the bed, would crawl out and pacify my curiosity.

Nothing.

“Zoey??” I whispered slightly more intensely.  “Psst.  Come here little girl.”

Nothing.

Oh shit.  She’s not under there… or she is and she’s been eaten by something.  This ridiculous thought crawled over my brain and I fought the urge to believe it.  Really??  I shrugged it off and – tap-tap-tap – there it was again.  It just kept going.

I reached the edge of the mattress and ran my fingers back and forth, just enough noise to lure a cat out of hiding to chase whatever was taunting her.

Nothing.

Oh come on! I thought, now fully annoyed and equally nervous. My fingers scratched back and forth again.

“Prrrrtt!” She said, popping her head out from under the bed.

Oh thank God!  I thought.  “Zoey!”  I reached down for the little girl and as my eyes adjusted again I saw it.

Pinched between her front teeth was the baby Jesus.

“ZOEY!” I’m not overly religious but it still felt pretty disrespectful to have the baby Jesus dangling from the mouth of a 1 year old tortoiseshell cat.

She dropped the small, plastic baby Jesus – a gift from Ren from a Mardi Gras King’s Cake.  The little figurine rattled onto the floor, spinning in circles until it came to a rest smiling back at me.

Not a monster.  Just a curious cat with a penchant for plastic relics.  She, in the meantime, flopped down on the floor and fell asleep.  I was left to fidget restlessly for the next few hours.  And all of this just before Easter.  Sigh.