The Beasts of Midnight

I enjoy “camping out” in the shed with the cats, and I’m glad the possums come in to eat and tank up on water. Maybe all that water they drink is the reason their fur is so soft. It gives me a good, Sam-Campbellish feeling to provide for critters, domestic and wild. I haven’t been able to sleep in a bed since the electric scooter accident back in ’04, so I have a new recliner out in the shed, and it is very comfortable.

At night I leave the shed door open slightly, winter and summer, so the cats and possums can go in and out at will without waking me up. Because they will. The possums scratch at the door, and the cats meow until they get my attention and roust me out to serve them. Last night, though, it got so cold by midnight in spite of the heater that I got up, put a full food dish outside (a water dish was already out)  and shut the door, hoping Bright was up in the loft instead of out in the cold. Hurry Possum got shut in with the rest of us because she was too scared to go out the door with me standing there, and I was too tired to go back to bed, wait for her to leave and get up again to shut the door. I told her to curl up in a snug spot and go to sleep. Then I returned to the recliner and pulled the covers over my head.

But possums are nocturnal animals. That means they don’t sleep at night. They roam around. They crunch food. They turn over wastebaskets. And hiding under the covers does not shut out the sounds of their scrabbling little feet as they climb and fall, then open and inspect my boxes of stored belongings. At one point, I felt a tug on the sheet, and, thinking it was one of the cats, I pushed back the covers and opened my eyes so I could see to pet it. It was Hurry, climbing up over the arm to take possession of the recliner!

At sight of me, she dropped to the floor, where she continued her explorations, accompanied by the rattling of rakes and shovels, occasional crashes of unknown objects and the slide of a stack of documents from the desk onto the floor.

By 3:00 o’clock I couldn’t take any more. After righting the wastebasket, I held the door open and ordered Hurry to leave. She froze in place, blocking the doorway so that Bright, who had been out in the cold, had to jump over her to get back inside, where he immediately leaped onto the cat condo and from there up to the loft. I gave up and returned to bed with the door still open. For the rest of the night, I heard occasional possum-cat squabbles over the food dishes, but I returned the covers to the over-the-head position and ignored the fights.

Eventually I fell asleep, just in time to be jerked from a deep slumber by the alarm.