"Burm" uda Triangle and The Cat From Outer Space

I wasn't quite sure of the origin of the sound ~ after all, the roar of the neighbors' tractor driving repeatedly past my front door drowned out all but the loudest of noises. But I kept hearing it, a kind of "scratch, scrape, scratch, plop" noise that was remarkably foreign to our household goings-on.

I was tasked in admin, though, and purposely ignored the scraping, figuring that one of the children were up to something in the kitchen.

In my busy-ness, I turned ever so slightly from my chair, only to find myself staring at at a small black creature with piercing gold-green eyes directly in front of me, It was that precise moment when Aubrey began proclaiming shriek "Mom! The cat's in the house!"

My guess was that the cat, Nikko, had entered through the back door, which has a faulty latch. (Since the burm project began in the front, paving the way for our front deck to be built, the back door had become our main entryway. Frequently, we find ourselves retracing our steps to close it securely.) No matter, though, because Aubrey promptly put the cat out-of-doors, and I continued my tasks.

The scritch-scratch noise continued.

Finally, I could stand it no more, thus I arose from my station to investigate.

Much to my surprise, a half-grown tabby kitten, perched in my kitchen window, startled from her careful maneuvering of the sill and sink, hoping to find her paws safely on the tile floor, looked keenly into my eyes with full knowing that she was doing something that would not make the humans happy.

My astonishment moved me to action, in which I gave her a quick shove back into the black of night.

Crash! Twang! Thud! (Oops ~ she landed on the air-conditioning unit.) but none the worse for wear as she quickly jumped back on to the railing of the back deck for her second (or was it third?) attempt at entering the house.

Thus, the mystery was solved.

No, it was not the Cat From Outer Space, but it was Clever Cat and her sidekick Contortionist Cat devising their entrance into the realm of all things human, hoping for a tasty morsel of something good to eat, or maybe even a stroke of affection!

Sigh.

I'll be glad when the front deck is done.