The Results of Sleep Deprivation

Sunday night I went to bed at 2am because I was up late lesson planning, talking to my S.O., his brother, a friend of theirs (all different conversations), and a friend in Vietnam. This is important information for you to have because I had to get up at 6am Monday, which means I got 4 whole hours of sleep.

Anyway, I stumbled around the house doing useful things (I think I somehow even pretended to sweep and possibly mop the kitchen?--it's all sort of a blur now). I gathered up my messenger bag, ammo-bag purse, cell phone, tea mug, and lunch bag, slipped on my red heels, and headed for the kitchen door.

There is a large frosted window in this door through which you can peer down into the mudroom a few steps below. As I approached across the kitchen, I looked through this window and realized there was a puddle of pee on the mudroom floor. No, sorry, two puddles.

I opened the door and sighed. The cat was sitting on the windowsill directly to the right of the mudroom door leading outside.

"Really?" I said. "Really? You had to pee on the floor?" I then noticed a poop. "For reals?"

I walked down the steps and looked to the left, to the other side of the mudroom. The trashcan had been turned over and and contents dispersed over the floor, then surrounded neatly by several more urine deposits.

"The crap," I said to the cat. "What were you doing in here last night?"

I sighed. "Whatever," I said. "I can't deal with this right now; I've got to go."

I tipped precariously on heels under the weight of my burdens to the door and reached with my left hand to open it while at the same time I reached with my right hand (both hands still full of items) to give the cat an affectionate petting so she'd know I didn't hate her.

My hand was within an inch of the cat's face when some gear in my brain that had been rusted still with a lack of sleep suddenly ground its way free and I actually really saw the cat.

Guenevere our "cat"

Needless to say I said a bad word and jumped back on the steps to the kitchen door. The possum hunched down, but made no move to attack. I unloaded my burdens and took off my shoes (so I could escape quickly if our visitor decided he hated me). I then edged back to the door and opened it so the possum could escape. It was then that I remembered that possums are actually about as intelligent as a dirt-filled beer bottle; he refused to get down.

Freedom is clearly only a jump away. Instead I had to take five minutes and use a broom to try to push him off the ledge.

He only got more prickly about it, and determined not to move.

I finally got him dangling from that little bench, then dumped it over on him. He lay on his back for a moment before slowly rolling over and, purely by accident, ending up with his nose out of doors. As it was the way he was facing, he decided to move in that direction. He trundled slowly out onto the step and then into the grass. 

Once his feet touched grass, the three neurons in his brain fired and he realized he was free. He took off across the lawn towards the red barn. He had to swerve a few times, though, because a small rock in the yard looked temping as shelter.

Basically, possums are idiots, but definitely cuter up close than they are dead in the road.