PanningForGold

Saturday started off normal enough.  Got up at the regular time of 5:30am to let the dog do her thing and make breakfast for the pets.  As I crawled back into bed I noticed it was very warm in our room so I cracked one window open about an inch and half figuring that would let the cool air in while keeping the snow and wind out.

A few hours later I’m suddenly awake, my wife is asking telling me there is a bird in the room.  The six cats are jumping off the shelves, dresser and bed, launching themselves at the low ceiling and windows as a little bird zooms around the room.  My wife and I fly out of bed and ‘join’ and by join I mean ‘add’ to the pandemonium.  My wife decides to put all the cats in the bathroom so we can rescue the bird safely.  Putting the plan in motion she grabs a cat and in the bathroom it goes, I’m quick on her heels with another cat.  Two in, four to go.  In the back of my head I hear the voice of worry, is it really a good idea to shove six excited cats who don’t really get along into a tiny bathroom together?  My wife opens the bathroom door to toss in a third cat, in the process the first two escape.  I snag another cat, but when I open the bathroom door I free the captive cat in the process.  Keep in mind we went from a dead sleep to total pandemonium to the implementation of a plan in mere moments. 

“Wait!, where is the bird?” I asked. In the moment I took to try to get a better grasp of the situation I noticed that while the cats were still excited they seemed to be looking for the bird and not finding it.  Could it have found its way back out the window?  We stopped and looked and listened.  No sign of the bird surely if it was still in the room the cats would know, but they were also looking.  My wife went to open the curtains a little wider and she noticed Trouble staring intently, following his gaze my wife spotted the bird on a shelf.  Everybody spotted it at the same time.  Once again chaos ensues.  Now we were a little more awake the task was to toss the cats into the living room.  Once again every time we got a cat out the door, the previously evicted cat would sneak back in.  Finally we got all the cats clear of the room and opened up all the bedroom windows as wide as we could.  Once again we lost track of the dang bird!

As I am starting to freeze to death in our room my wife says to me, “Do you think the bird flew into the living room while we had the door open?” We look stupidly at one another, my wife heads into the living room while I keep watch in the bedroom.  Half a minute later I hear through the closed-door, “The bird is out here”  As I step out the door my wife is heading towards me with a cat in her arms, “Cats back in the bedroom” she calls out as she starts to pass me.

“Wait!” I yell in a panicked voice, “windows in the bedroom are wide open”

“Shit”

I ran back into the unbelievably cold bedroom and closed all the windows.  Once again we were faced with the task of herding all six cats through another door.  This time we had the added benefit of the dog howling away in the laundry room.  Finally we managed to separate the bird from the cats.  The bird (a Carolina wren) seemed to be in good condition and we managed to gently usher it through the door.  My wife and I sat down and took a collective deep breath. After a minute or so of silence I asked,  “So, breakfast at Denny’s?”