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Oh, poor Sybil. He's had a rough week. On Monday he had a flea bath (luckily it seems we caught it in time...no mass infestation) which left him in a state of shock for the next twelve hours. Then yesterday, as I was working away on a story for a magazine, the fire alarm went off, right outside the door. The poor cat about leapt out of his skin. It's telling that my first thought wasn't, "Oh, no! A fire!" but rather, "What idiot pulled the alarm?" It's like hearing a car alarm at night. Who actually thinks that a car is being broken into? Nobody. Everyone just assumes, and is usually correct in doing so, that the car alarm has gone haywire. Our response isn't alarm, which would be the point of an alarm, but rather annoyance. They should call them Car Annoyances. The apartment building alarm is more than annoying - ear-drum piercing is more like it. No worries about sleeping through that. I stepped into the hall to see what I could see, which was nothing. Did I detect a whiff of smoke? Maybe, but then this building always smells a bit odd. I checked up and down the staircase...no signs of fire or panicked residents. I stepped out into the courtyard...no flames and smoke coming from any windows. I walked to the sidewalk, and checked out the sides of the building. Nothing. Still...a fire alarm. And people were beginning to gather. I ran back to the apartment, where poor Sybil sat in miserable shock. I dragged the cat carrier out of the closet and stuffed him in. Yowl! And out we went, into the ear-splitting noise of the alarm. YOWL! Out to the sidewalk, where other people had brought pets. YOWL! If I am ever (God forbid) on the dating market again, I'm going to take a cat with me everywhere I go. Yowl. Every twenty-something woman in the building came to fuss over Sybil, say how pretty he was, call me a good daddy. Yowl! Sybil disagreed. He'd had enough excitement for one week...for one year. Eventually a woman came out, casually smoking a cigarette, and said "Oh, there's no fire. My kid pulled the alarm." O.K. So why didn't you come out immediately and let us know? Back into the non-blazing non-inferno we went, the alarm bell still clanging off the wall. Sybil yowled like mad at the noise of it all. Once back inside he ran and hid under the bed. I was afraid he'd never trust us again. But by supper he'd forgotten all about it. Typical. |
