Our Maine Coon cat, Tom Thumb, also known as Tommy, was 9 years old that winter. He was in the habit of sleeping on our king-sized bed, stretched horizontally to his full 32-inch tip-of-the-nose-to-tip-of-his-tail length. He is a big cat. Even with a concrete base for the bed, I can tell when he leaves for a hit of cat crunchies, or a drink of water, or maybe to use the sandbox box, so I wasn’t particularly bothered when, around four in the morning, he bounced off the bed and disappeared.
About 10 minutes later, I decided I needed to get up as well. On my way to the bathroom, I noticed Tommy was on the floor staring at the bedroom patio door, so I casually reached over, slid the door closed and flicked on the lock. Back in bed, I expected the cat to continue sleeping with us until at least the sun was up. After a couple of more minutes, I sat up in bed, looking for Tommy, and noticed he was still staring at the patio door. That’s when I actually noticed what he was staring at. A person! A person dressed in dark clothing crouched on his hands and knees, trying to slide the bedroom patio door open! Shit, that’s annoying!
I jumped out of bed and started hammering on the glass, screaming. ‘Get out of here! Get out of here!’
Lawrie, who was sound asleep at the time, leapt straight out of bed, waving his arms over his head and growling. Somehow, he knew the situation called for being big and noisy. Tommy ran for the bathroom and had a bit of an accident as he slid around the corner, spraying cat pee everywhere. The cat burglar wisely decided that we were all nuts and he dove off the second-floor balcony to escape the madhouse, leaving his sandals behind in his haste.
Wide awake and pumped with adrenaline, we grabbed the flashlights and searched outside the house. We could see were face and hand imprints on the outside of the glass patio doors, where he had attempted to see if we had anything worth stealing on the lower level. Since we don’t own a TV, there was nothing of interest to him. He then climbed up the half-wall between our neighbours and us, and pulled himself over the deck railing to gain access to our bedroom level.
In the end, all that happened was we tightened up our security a bit with metal poles to slot into the patio door frames at night to allow air circulation, but not enough space to allow a burglar inside. And we added a motion detector onto our upper patio, which we activated at night.
Tommy, on the other hand, was a nervous wreck for months after. Anytime we went to bed, even for an afternoon nap, he perched on the foot of the bed, facing the door, not sleeping! We slept better knowing he was on guard.
Hasta luego, Lawrie, Lynda, and Tommy
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