The things in the walls, or the schizophrenic cat...

Sometime between the hours of 4 and 6 AM, our cat Loki awakes from a sound slumber, stands up, blinks wearily, shakes himself awake, and begins his early morning ritual of turning our bedroom into a HELL.

He yowls. He drags his claws across the walls to render a sound reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard. He claws open the closet door. He steps on anything that could potentially make a noise and knocks over every possible thing he can. Sometimes, he tries to knock things off the walls, especially anything that hangs over our heads. If we close the door, he slams his body into it until he cracks the door frame or we let him back into the room. This carries on for hours.

Unfaltering, he will wake us up during the deepest of sleeps, running away when we get up to grab him, returning once we are again comfortable in bed, to begin the process all over again.

I think he's trying to kill us. Be it falling objects, lack of sleep, or overwhelming terror when woken from a deep sleep to the sound of something crashing to the floor, he's determined to ruin us.

Or maybe, just maybe, he's trying to make us crazy enough to hear the imagined things in the walls he's trying to dig out, or the voices that tell him to do things.

I want to believe it's simply a case of a schizophrenic cat, but deep down, I know he's out to get us.


I may never sleep peacefully again.