[zelda_pinwheel]

i have a very good imagination. too good in fact for my own comfort, frequently. overactive, hypersensitive, "is it real or is it memorex" vivid.

so one night, several years ago, i was reading in bed. i think it was a John Dickson Carr book (it might have been "The Plague Court Murders" ; i think i remember the french title being "la maison de la peste" but i could be wrong), the important point is that i had read other books by the author previously and they had been lighthearted, rather amusing mysteries. i had no reason to doubt this new book wouldn't be the same, but in fact it was a whole nother pair of sleeves. the author had decided to try out a sort of supernatural atmosphere, full of suspense and inexplicable phenomena and things going bump in the night, and alas, he was quite good at it. if i had known, i would never have started reading it, and ESPECIALLY not alone, in a silent house, at 1 in the morning.

but, unsuspecting as the first victim in the proverbial bad thriller movie, i went blithely into the attic, so to speak. by the time i realized what i had gotten myself into, it was too late. the nape of my neck was prickling, my heart was pounding, my ears were straining to make out whether i had or not heard a sound, and if yes what in god's name it could have been, and whatever position i was in i had to keep turning over convulsively every few minutes to make sure there were no monsters creeping up behind me.

now i must insert a small parentheses to explain that in general, i find the presence of a cat to be quite reassuring ; if my imagination is playing tricks on me, i look at the cat rolled into a placid ball on the end of the bed, and reason that with her superfine hearing she would be sure to notice anything strange well before me, and being such a nervous cat she would never sleep peacefully if anything were amiss. so on the night in question, feeling quite thoroughly spooked, i glanced down at the end of the bed for some reassurance that there was nothing to fear but fear itself.

this of course, is the moment the cat chose to wake up with a start as if she had heard a clap of thunder, walk stiff-legged and saucer-eyed to the very edge of the bed, lean over, and stare through the doorway into the next room.

now, she could easily have been staring at the other cat, up to no good in the middle of the night, as cats frequently are. but rather than stare at the floor (cat-level) she was staring much higher up. approximately the level of a serial killer's head, as he lay in wait for me, to be precise. or possibly a ghost, which would explain why i didn't hear anything. and she continued to stare, with her head forward, every muscle taut, and ears on full alert, so long that she finally had to sit down (veeeeeery cautiously), but without once even blinking her eyes, which would have fallen out of her head if they had been open any wider.

myself, during this time, i was of course completely paralysed with terror. whatever she was staring at was surely about to come and kill me in my bed. i couldn't even move enough to go look through the door myself. it seemed like hours we stayed like that, the cat staring into the dark room, and me staring at the cat, neither one of us moving a muscle. i can't even remember how long the vigil continued, or who broke it first. i do remember i had to leave the light on all night, and i didn't get much sleep at all, if any.

retrospectively, i realise that this was probably some twisted manifestation of cat humor. somewhere there is a site called "icanhascatfud" where at the very least cats are telling how they kept their hoomans up all night scared of monsters and serial killers, and mocking us, and possibly even a photo of me clutching the sheet up to my chin with the light on, counting the minutes until the sun would come up and i would be safe, with a sarcastic caption. but that is a lot easier to say by the light of day.

anyway this story is to explain why i like living in an appartment, where i know that there are other people within shouting distance, even if they are noisy sometimes, and why i would not want to live in some isolated house in the middle of nowhere if you paid me to. and especially not with a cat.