In the middle of the night; episode 11 or "Meow"?!

OK, we've finally broken Aeron of the habit of waking up her parents in the middle of the night. It's been a marvelous improvement!

So you can imagine my annoyance at being woken by the cat last night. There I was, at 2am, sleeping peacefully, when I hear the cat plaintively meowing in the living room. We have a vaulted ceiling, so the meows were echoing throughout the house.

I snarl under my breath and throw back the covers, intending to stomp downstairs and figure out what Mitzi's damage is. Then I hear the soft trill from the kitten sleeping at the foot of the bed, in her usual spot. What the heck?! Our cat is asleep....so who is meowing downstairs?!?

I head downstairs, flipping on some lights as I go and, in the living room, I find a skittish, plump, tiger tabby yelling to get out the front door. I've seen this kitty before; he belongs to the new neighbors across the cul-de-sac.

"What are you doing in here?" I whisper to the cat. I'm not sure why. I open the front door and the cat makes a top-speed run for it.

"Huh." I climbed the stairs, shaking my head, and fell back into bed.

An amusing coda to my tale: Kayla gets up this morning and tells me about the weird dream she had last night. There was a cat in her room, meowing at her, and it wasn't Mitzi. She open her door to let the cat out and went back to bed. Next she dreamed she was Charles Manson, being sentenced to death.

"The first part wasn't a dream, kid. The neighbors cat got in our house somehow." I told her. "But the Manson part, that was weird."