Night Noise

 Last night, Tim woke me up coughing. He coughed and coughed to the point it sounded like he was choking. This cold/plague/evil curse is awful stuff, but what makes it worse is that he will not take anything for it. I found a night time cough suppressant which works on the cough. It doesn't have all the added ingredients for sinus, body aches, fever, etc. Just the cough. I drink ginger tea through the day, just keep adding hot water to my cup. At night I take a dose of the cough suppressant which allows me to get some sleep.

Tim does neither and I don't know why, but he is a bullhead man. (Luckily, I, myself, have not a stubborn bone in my body. 😏) So he hacked himself awake, and on the other side of the bed, I was awake too. Even worse, I began to cough right along with him. 

He was fine, he claimed. Didn't want to take anything for it, so I came out to the living room for awhile. Being a companionable sort, Mr Cough-y followed me out, sitting in his rocking chair. We were sitting there in the dark when suddenly there was a loud crack of thunder. Immediately after, it began to pour, the rain pounding down on the tin roof. There were a couple more cracks of thunder, and then as suddenly as it started, the rain began to taper off. While it was an astonishingly brief storm, it was intense. 

So what was missing? Lightning. We saw no lightning. I have been puzzling over that. My first thought was that the fast moving storm was accompanied by extreme cloud cover we could not see in the night sky. Maybe the lightning took place above the clouds? But then, wouldn't it have muffled the thunder too? I mean those thunderclaps were sharp and loud. 

Reading about it, thunder simply does not occur without lightning. So, I throw it out there for your consideration. What did we witness?

So eventually, Tim wandered down the hall and back to bed. I listened to him coughing in bed.

The sound was a lot more tolerable from the couch than from the bed, so I stayed right where I was, and eventually dozed off.

The motion detector light came on outside and I was jolted awake by the sound of two cats fighting and squalling. I leaped off the couch and went to the sliding doors. I expected to see Phantom, the mysterious new cat who sneaks in at night to finish off the extra cat food left from the two remaining ferals. I expected to see either of them doing battle. Much to my surprise, it was not Tiger or Possum. It was Freddie, who I did not know was outside!

I flung open the door and went flying out in my nightgown. Usually, Phantom runs away at the sight of a person, but not this time. To make it even worse, Houdi tore outside when I opened the door. Now there were three of them squalling. Only two were actually fighting. Houdi was merely stalking around with his tail straight up and three times its normal size. He circled the fight yowling the cat equivalent of 'Yeah! Take that! My brother is going to whip your butt!!' Meanwhile, Phantom and Fred were going at it hammer and tongs.

I had to go back in to put shoes on. The ten tons of gravel we had dropped earlier in the week was too much for my bare feet. When I came back out, Houdi was circling the car growling. I hopped in the driver's seat and started the car thinking Phantom would run back to the old house, and Fred would head to the porch. Instead, Phantom ran for the old house with Freddie hot on his heels, both of them screaming their heads off. 

It was a long night, but Fred was waiting on the porch this morning. He had a snack and then arranged himself on the same couch I had spent the night on. He did some stretching and yawning and then tucked his chin on top of his murder mittens. 

Unlike me, the stinker fell soundly asleep and is sleeping still.