Sometimes, things really do go bump in the night.

It’s an unsettling feeling to be awakened from a sound sleep knowing that you heard something in the house.....but not really knowing exactly what, or where....which is exactly where Kathy and I found ourselves a few evenings last week.

Our imagination? Maybe....but still, you don’t hear imaginary things in your sleep – do you?

An intruder?

An other-worldly visitor from the Great Beyond, a spirit which decided it was time to pay a visit to the Harris household for ghostly reasons all its own?

Or maybe just the creaking and settling of an older home cooling from the summer heat?

All those things went through my mind as I poked around the house at one o’clock in the morning, looking for the source of a noise that Kathy and I each heard but couldn’t quite identify....just enough to know that something wasn’t right.

Our small dog Cocoa was in on the hunt as well.....she shot off the foot of the bed in chase of something or somebody just as we were startled from sleep, reaffirming that we had indeed heard something.

That we heard a bedroom door creaking open as well, for no apparent reason, was of little comfort.

There was no solving the mystery that night, though, as we checked the house and the yard without finding anything amiss. We finally let go of the nagging feeling and drifted back to sleep.

We talked about the middle-of-the-night episode the next day, and pretty well decided that whatever we had been hearing wasn’t anything to worry about.....if it was anything at all.

After all, there’s no point losing sleep – literally – chasing ghosts.

So there we left it.....until Kathy got up in the middle of the following night and headed to the kitchen for a drink of water.

“Honey??!!!” she called loudly....not a scream or a shout, but with a definite note of concern and urgency.

Instantly awake, I leaped off the bed and dashed into the kitchen to come to her rescue.....well, okay, that’s not quite how it happened. Instead, I kind of just propped myself up on one elbow and in a show of gallant male heroism said something profoundly reassuring like, “Huh?”

Then I tried to get Cocoa to go find out what was happening, figuring a ferocious 10-pound Chihuahua mix would be far more terrifying than a middle-aged man to any intruder, but she wasn’t buying any of it.

Turns out, just as Kathy was heading for the kitchen a shadow had darted through the doorway.....close to the ground, lightning-fast and with a tail that clearly defined our uninvited guest as a cat.

If nothing else, the mystery was solved.

One of the several cats that wanders our neighborhood had found its way in through Cocoa’s open door....possibly in search of food and water, or perhaps just persistently curious.

Even after being chased away that night, though, the bold feline wasn’t done. If anything, it got even more daring the next night.

I popped into the kitchen that evening only to catch a glimpse of a tail disappearing out the door as the cat headed back outside; a few minutes later when I returned there was a brown face peering around the corner of the kitchen doorway at me. When Kathy again encountered the cat a little later, it was obvious that our visitor wasn’t going to be scared off easily.

Cocoa, of course, was oblivious to the cat-and-people game being played out just a few feet away in the kitchen. She stayed on her usual perch on the couch in the front picture window, nose pressed to the glass as she kept a vigilant watch against any intruders....while in the next room the stealthy cat had designs on her food bowl.

We decided that enough was enough, and just started closing the door we had usually left propped open a crack to allow Cocoa to go out as she needed.

That meant a trip or two during the night to let her out.....but it was better than chasing a wild cat around the premises at all hours.

Hopefully the cat will get the message and move on, and there will be nothing else that goes bump in the night.

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