Last night when I got home from work, all the cats, and I do mean ALL of the cats were sitting on my desk, looking intently skyward. I could see the decorative rock wall had suffered in my absence and scratch marks were visible on most of the rocks surfaces. Wondering if my cats had decided to learn how to rock climb in my absence, I set down my purse and walked over to investigate.

Mike laughs at me, but I have the hearing of a small child. I can hear even the smallest noise and catch conversation in restaurants all around me. As I drew nearer to my clowder cluster, I heard a rustling noise overhead and looked up.

We removed the wood-burning stove last year. It was illegal according to Oregon standards, and so we took it out and blocked up the stove pipe. The noise was coming in the stovepipe.

This pipe to our home has been a tunnel of traffic in the past- prompting us to not only install a face plate, but reinforce it with colored duct tape for good measure. Since the invasion of the honeybees two years ago, I keep a stethoscope in my desk drawer, so I grabbed it and had a listen. What I heard was a critter in distress- what kind of critter, I had no idea, but it was certainly one that captivated my group.

I woke Mike who had long gone to bed and missed all the excitement. We grabbed a large rubbermaid tub with a lid and pried the duct tape off. Mike moved the face plate slightly when all of a sudden a huge fruit bat flew into our living room!

The cats of course gave chase……”Live prey- Mom, you are wonder!” In between ducking when the bat got to close (and yes, I will admit, I did scream a couple of times) we were also watching the great prey game at work. All the cats including the kittens were leaping in the air trying to grab the bat before someone else did.

I grabbed a towel, but before I could fling it over the scared creature, Matuse leaped about five feet straight in the air. I saw his mouth open and one bat was now captured. It took some doing and some bargaining to get the bat out of Matuse’s clutches, but I finally suceeded. I hustled over to the front door, and flung the bat high in the air praying it wasn’t injured. Although there were blood spots on the pavement below the bat took off. I could only pray it would stay okay.

For about an hour the cats refused to settle down. When they couldn’t find their bat friend to play with, they turned on each other and several fights broke out. Feliway restored the peace within the hour.

On the Troy front, he is still with us although now he suckles his brothers and sisters so I have to isolate him. He’s on antibiotics to counteract any bacteria the milk might have harbored- but he seems perfectly fine.