There’s nothing like waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of the cat chasing something.

A couple of weeks ago, the cat woke me up running up and down the hall at 3:30 in the morning. When I peaked out of my room, I saw the shadow of something gliding soundlessly up and down the hallway above my head. It wasn’t until my husband shined a flashlight on it that it sunk it what it was. A bat. Yikes!

In the 12 years we’ve lived in this house we’ve never laid eyes on a bat, so this was a big surprise. Neither of us knew exactly what to do and there was a bit of panic setting in. With the help of a tennis racket, we solved the problem and went back to bed. But not before the girls came out of their room wondering what was going on.

The next night, Chris promised Lilly that there was no way another bat would come into the house. But he was wrong. Around 11:30 p.m., the cat was after something at our bedroom window. Chris thought it was a bug and told me not to turn on the light but at closer inspection — he declared it another bat. Luckily, it was in the window well — so we just shut the window and trapped it between the window and the screen until the morning when we set it free.

We haven’t seen another bat since, but I’m always a little uneasy when the cat jumps off the bed in the middle of the night now. I hope out bat nightmares are over, but I don’t think we could be so lucky in a 100 year old house.