Rumble on the roof

Thursday morning (I've been out of town, subject of the next blog) so this is just now being shared, but Thursday morning, my cat Pyewacket, he of the six-pound, no-apparent-reason, weight-loss, woke me up at 5:15. He was in the landing window, a perch he could not have obtained pre-loss, and he was growling.

I was home alone (except for the menagerie) and growling at an opened window is just never good news. I could see from his silhouette (we keep lots of night lights glowing) that he was doubled in size, his tail a huge frizz and his back in hissy-kitty formation. His brother and partner in crime was crouched on the stairs. He could not attain the window in his state of pork-ulence (thanks to friend David for this variation of corpulence) so it fell to Pye to defend the home front.

I think I knew before I propped my chin on elbows in the window what I would find. Neighbor kitties are not given to second story climbing. Squirrels are still asleep and I think this sort of disturbance beneath their dignity anyway. But it's not beneath the dignity of... you guessed it... a raccoon.

I knew we had (another) one because the outdoor cats' water bowl has been very dirty every morning. Sure enough, staring at me not two feet from the window, was the object of my next entrapment. He continued to chitter, then turned that sassy tail and sauntered off the roof, onto the pergola, and out of sight.

Let the games begin.