Strange things in my bed

4:19am Saturday July 10, 2009

I just got home from catching baby number ?? 3? 4? I am only counting it as number 2 since it’s the second baby I’ve caught here where I felt like I managed the whole thing from start to finish. (Lovely 4th baby, tight nuchal cord, slow shoulders, intact peri, lovely 3rd stage. Just a gorgeous birth.) Its late and I walked home alone, once again soaked in afterbirth otherwise I might have slept at the clinic. Maura told me about encountering a really large snake on her walk home one afternoon a few weeks ago and since then, I’ve been paralyzed with my life-long fear of snakes on my pitch black walks home alone late at night. Add to it that someone told me yesterday there are cobras here and, understandably, that hasn’t helped things much.

So, I just got home. Getting home entails walking along a dark road, getting barked at by packs of dogs, and walking along even darker alleys with foliage that brushes along my bare legs and only adds to my already jumpy disposition. I spend much of the walk wishing I’d brought a flashlight to Bali, and digging my fingernails into my palms, repeating “I will NOT freak out. I will NOT freak out. I will NOT freak out.” There are lots of bumps in the night in Bali so, once home, I’m not guaranteed sanctuary from the heebie jeebies. Those “bumps” include the huge geckos that live on my celiling and giggle to themselves periodically throughout the day and, at night, make the most horrendous throaty sound that wakes me from a dead slumber and sets my teeth on edge. I like the little baby geckos just fine, but the enormous adults give me the creeps, staring at me with their dead dinosaur eyes from 15 feet over my head. I’m constantly scanning for them overhead and when, invariably, I find they are *directly* above me I always think, “Look guy, do what you need to do. Please just don’t fall on me, okay?”

Anyway, like I said. I just got home. Its almost 4:30am. Its dark and quiet out and there are noises. I’m a little spooked already from my walk home and, as I was washing up for bed in my bathroom just now, my bedside lamp bulb decided to burn out, eliminating the safe warm glow from the area around my bed and casting my house back into an ominous black darkness. I froze at my bathroom door. Um, not helping the creeped out factor much, thanks. I repeated my mantra “I will NOT freak out, I will NOT freak out” and made peace with the fact that, yes, it had been unfortunate timing but, no, it was not likely that a serial killer cobra had switched off my lamp and was waiting to eat me when I came out of the bathroom. I calmly walked out of the bathroom, turned out the porch light, and climbed into bed, naked, pulling my folded comforter up over me. I was midway through laying backwards onto my pillow when I knew something was horribly wrong. My bedspread was warm. Like someone or something had been sitting on it. Recently. I sat paralyzed for a moment, not sitting up and not lying down (ya know, letting my "core" do all the work). And as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw a dark furry thing laying at the edge of my bed, not moving. I reached down and quickly brushed it with my fingers. Small. Warm. Fuzzy. Not a sock, not a piece of my clothing. Nope. I jumped out of bed like –well, like I had just found a small warm fuzzy thing in my bed in the dark. Again, I repeated, “I will NOT freak out. I will NOT freak out.” I ran to my wardrobe. Somehow, being naked and confronting unknown fuzzy things in your bed doesn’t seem to mix. I pulled a dress over my head and said out loud, “Okay. There is a warm fuzzy thing in your bed. It’s okay. It is OKAY.” I turned the main overhead light on and realized there were noises now coming from my bed. Little noises. I listened. That sounds like… kittens. Feeling fairly sure of my discovery but still steeling myself against something much more horrifying, like badgers or snakes in fur vests, I pulled back the mosquito netting and examined the little fuzzy thing on my bed. Sure enough, a kitten, eyes still closed, scrambling for warmth and unhappy with his eviction from my covers. I sat down on the edge of the bed, fear dissipating mostly, but still thoroughly creeped out. I slowly unfolded my comforter and found two more.

There are three *tiny* kittens in my bed.

What the hell am I supposed to do about this? Its 4:30am, the mother is not around and, apparently, I’m a midwife. The cat has abandoned her kittens with me. Could there possibly be any further proof? So I did the only reasonable thing I could think of doing: I took an extra pillow, piled the kittens under it at the foot of my bed, covered the pillow with the end of my comforter and have climbed into bed with them. Balinese kittens. Kind of gross, pretty cute, I might die of some rare tropical feline disease, but whatever. It’s 4:30 in the morning and I am exhausted and have no idea what else I’m supposed to do right now. Anyway, its kind of nice to share my bed with someone else for the first time in a while. I just hope this is the last nasty surprise I have in my bed for long time. Also, no cobras on the walk home would be awesome too.