I raced through the basement with no sign of anything amiss. I ran up the stars, glanced at the alarm panel and noticed a light was lit to cue me as to why the alarm was triggered but nothing registered. I was intent on knowing our house wasn't on fire before I went any further.
It was only as I was racing down the hallway when I wondered what in the heck I was doing and what would I do if I encountered a stranger in our home. Too late. I was there.
By that time, my son was upstairs disarming the alarm. "Didn't you see that the back door was open?" Nope. I didn't notice a thing. "Didn't you see the light for the back door was lit?" Nope. Nothing registered. I looked at the panel but didn't see a thing.
Why was the back door open? Why were we standing there discussing it? Why were we relatively calm?
It was then that we noticed our Feisty Black Cat wandering in and around us with a puffed up tail. My son informed me that our Scaredy Cat bolted under his bed the second he opened his bedroom door. The wheels started turning and we realized it was Feisty Cat who had opened our back door and set off the alarm. Only then did both of us realize we had heard a mighty loud yowl come from our bored and feisty black cat in some time (probably) shortly before the alarm bells started ringing.
It was then, when the alarm company called us to check in on us. I quickly reminded my son of our password as I picked up the phone in the kitchen. It was dead. It rang, but it wasn't working.
Immediately I remembered that I had just been fighting with the TV in the middle of the night because the cable channels weren't working properly. In my middle of the night state of confusion, I assumed the two situations were related. I ran to get my cell phone so I could call back and assure them all was well. Thank goodness my son was right beside me reminding me this had happened before. When the wall phone doesn't work, the cordless ones do. We ran off in separate directions to retrieve a cordless phone (him running to the charger while I ran to where I knew I had last left it).
At long last, the ringing phone was answered and our alarm company's representative was on the phone ensuring all was well. When I nonchalantly told her the situation was resolved and our cat had opened the door (we had apparently forgot to lock it), she sounded rather unconvinced. "Are you sure everything is okay?" as she pursued her line of questioning. "Yes, our cat opens doors" I replied as if it was the most normal response in the world.
We had a nice little middle-of-the-night chat while our feisty cat's tail returned to its normal shape and size and we all headed off to bed, while our scaredy cat still remained hidden out of sight.
It was a test. It was only a test. Thank goodness.
