Hearing things

Last night Dave and I were lying in bed (don't worry, I'm not going there, you can stop recoiling in fear) last night, and I heard a noise outside.

It was faint but repetitive, and we had the window open to get fresh air now that it's warm enough outside. It's nice to have a breeze and a whiff of fragrance from the blossoms on the crabapple tree in the back yard wafting into our bedroom.

I thought the noise we'd heard was a cat fight, and that thought was based on a good deal of experience.

When I was a kid we had this completely lovable lump of a cat named Shadow. He was our first family pet.*

My sister and I were really excited to be getting a cat. There were two all black kittens left from the litter, a boy and a girl. For some reason we wanted a male cat, though the reason why escapes me now.

We asked the usual questions of the farmer about whether they had been vaccinated (they hadn't) and what their personalities were like. My sister and I were just so excited we were going home with a cat we didn't care which one we left with so long as we left with one. My grandmother had lent us an old picnic basket for the trip home.

He was really tiny so my dad asked how old he was. The farmer thought a moment and replied the kitten was "four weeks and, let me see, I guess nine days old"** to which I quizzically piped up "Dad! Dad!! DAD! Doesn't he mean FIVE weeks and TWO days old?" I was promptly told to "keep quiet."

On the way home in our 1979 diarrhea brown Datsun (not the pretty blue one here, but like it only diarrhea brown with two doors) my sister and I argued over who would hold him in the back seat most of the ride home. The kitten mewed what was quite possibly the cutest meow I've ever heard at the top of this hill on a gravel road. We stopped at the co-op on the way home to get him some food. He was so tiny he fell asleep in my ten year old hands with room to spare.

Neither my sister nor I would go into Zellers with my dad to get a litter box or scoop for him, fearing that the kitten would end up loving the other more in the impressionable first hours he was ours. We were too excited to leave the kitten in the car anyway.

The debate about what to name him raged on the whole ride home, and that night. Someone suggested we name him "Chip" because the colour of his black fur looked like the colour of a chocolate chip when he was sitting in the sun.

I, however, was none too impressed with this name. In fact I was so distraught with the idea of naming him Chip that I lay awake in bed all night and ran into my parents' room early in the morning when I thought I had a better name for him. Lucky for all involved his name became Shadow and I was celebrated for what was such a creative name for the cat.***

Shadow was allowed outside but he rarely strayed from our yard. When he did, it often ended in him being beat up by other neighbourhood cats. Shadow was the kind of cat the squirrels approached without fear, and who would come in the house after being outside with sunflower shells all over his head. He seemed to like the company of the birds, and it never occurred to him he should have some interest in attacking and eating them. Shadow was lover and not a fighter his whole life and loved nothing more than basking on the patio slabs in the sun and getting belly rubs.

The sound I heard lying in bed last night sounded like the noise that sent everyone running outside to rescue Shadow from being beat up when I was a kid. It sounded like cats off in the distance were fighting but it was faint. Our guys are indoor cats so I wasn't worried about them. I listened and tried to pinpoint where the noise was coming from.

Dave thought I was nuts though, and didn't hear the noise at first. Later he thought it wasn't cats, it was a table saw and the high pitched noise it makes when the blade spins through wood. He was convinced it was "mechanical in nature" (even though it was near midnight).

And thus, we had a stalemate.

We continued to listen, when finally, it occurred to me.

We were both wrong.

The sound we heard was a baby in a neighbour's house crying.

I don't know anyone who has an infant that young around here, but that's definitely what it was. The poor thing was testing out its lungs until the wee hours of the morning, probably leaving pacing and frustrated parents wondering how to soothe it.

And with that, I realized that if we can't tell the difference between a cat fight, a power tool, and a baby crying, we probably aren't ready for kids yet.

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*Actually, a goldfish I had (and whose name I've since forgotten but it was probably something really cool like "goldie") when I was five was our first family pet. Sadly, it met an untimely demise when my dad was changing the water in its bowl, and filled the bowl with water from the hot tap with the fish still in the bowl. I can still remember him trying to explain why the fish was floating on its belly. I bring it up when I'm in need of political capital, "remember the time you killed my poor, helpless goldfish dad?" I even do a good impression of the goldfish in its last few moments. "Ooh good, clean water! Wait, what's this? OW! OW! It's burning my skin! Oooohhh nooOOO!" It's really quite funny, I promise. Reading it now though, I think you had to be there.

**We now realize the cat was WAY too young to leave its mother's side. The other kittens in the litter had already been adopted out so we thought it was okay and kinda figured the farmer knew what he was doing. Incidentally the girl kitten was named Cricket and we always regretted not bringing her home too. She stayed on the farm. I'm totally going to name a pet Cricket. The funny thing was that our cat Shadow LOVED eating crickets (real ones, not his sister) and ate everything but the legs. We used to find them strewn all over the garage floor.

***At least so we thought. Unfortunately this wasn't true because I think every time we took him to the vet's office in his 13 year life, there was always another animal named Shadow waiting to see the vet. So much for creativity.