Oh, What a Night!

Wendy checks the Perimeter...

And gives the "All Clear."

Last night was pretty wild at the Queen's household.

It all started as I sat in the chair next to my bed, looking at a catalog. My husband was already asleep, so I was using a small light on the nightstand, and the rest of the room was pretty dim. My cat Wendy started to stalk a small object on the floor near the doorway. I thought it was her catnip mouse, but I changed my mind when the object suddenly leaped away from her. I did some leaping about that time, myself.

Whatever it was had gone in the general direction of my quilt rack, so Wendy and I both crept in that direction. We pulled apart the layers of quilts and looked all over the place for that little critter, but we didn't find anything. Finally I told myself that it must have been a harmless cricket, even though that would have been the biggest dadgum cricket I had ever seen. Still, I was tired and just wanted to go to sleep.

I did just that, but sometime later a noise made me leap again. Something had squealed, or squeaked, or squawked. I have a hard time describing this noise, partly because I was trying to wake up as it happened. But I knew one thing right away. This was no cricket. I also knew it sounded like it was under the bed.

I asked my husband if he had heard the noise, and he said yes.

"So what was it?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said.

"Oh, great. There's probably a mouse under the bed."

"Well if there is, Wendy will get it."

I don't want to cast any aspersions here, but Wendy is a house cat. She's never, to my knowledge, been outside. Stalking her catnip mouse is about as far as that goes. Still, I looked over at her, and she was giving it the old college try. She seemed to have zeroed in on something between the footstool and my purse--right next to my bed. I went for the light on the nightstand and discovered two tiny little eyes staring up at me. Since this was the same dim light I was using earlier, I was pretty freaked out for another second or two. Then I managed to see what I was looking at--one of those tiny, cute little green frogs.

Cute or no, Wendy was worried about her reputation and was about to go for him. I secretly suspect she wouldn't have accomplished much other than causing him to hop around the room, or back under the bed so we couldn't get to him. The process had already started when Dave deposited her in the hallway and shut the door while he caught the poor little frog and took him outside.

So anyway, I'm pretty tired today. Tonight I work until 10 p.m., and I need to leave my house at the crack of dawn tomorrow to start that long day of travel toward Dallas. So if you see me at the conference and I look pretty haggard, now you know why!

Cera slept through the whole thing, so I had to tell her about it.