Whiskers

What a day it had been… I left my house at 7 in the morning, got caught in traffic, and spent the majority of my time until 7pm on work… I was exhausted already and still had a group interview to do, as my company was hiring some new interns. I had been away from home for over 15 hours when I finally pulled my car into the driveway and got ready to settle in for the night. My cat, Whiskers, waited for her dinner at the front door. Were it not for the lack of food, I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t realize I was even gone. It was nearly 11pm before I actually got to bed, and I knew that I would have to be up in 6 hours to start the next exhausting day. Only 3 more days; the weekend couldn’t come soon enough. I walked into my bedroom, changed out of my work pants, and fell heavily onto my soft mattress. Now, I tend to have a hard time falling asleep quickly, and tonight was no exception. I played some games on my phone, hoping that they would bore me to sleep. Four games of Euchre later, I put the phone down.

What happened next was, for lack of a better term, strange. I awoke about an hour later to the sound of my cat clawing the end of my bed’s box spring, as she is often prone to do. I made a mental note to give her a kick in the morning for waking me up after such a long day. I knew full well that she wouldn’t learn, but it would make me feel better at least. I remember falling into a deep sleep after her incessant clawing stopped. Or, so I thought I had. Shortly after falling back to sleep, I awoke. I was groggy, as I was completely asleep just moments before. My heart was beating out of my chest for some unexplainable reason and my chest was tight as if someone were sitting on me. I turned on my light and decided that I need to walk around a bit, to calm down. It was probably just a slight panic attack related to the day’s stress… I walked to my door only to realize that I had not left it slightly ajar as I typically do. I opened the door to see Whiskers sitting in front of my door, simply staring at me with her large, amber eyes. She meowed, softly and trotted down the hallway. I stood, staring blankly as my mind unfogged from the sudden awakening. As I reached full consciousness, all I could wonder was, if Whiskers was outside of my closed bedroom door all this time, what exactly made the scratching sound at the end of my bed…?