When cats suck

I was dreaming about...something. It was a nice dream. I think I was a Viking, or a space cowboy. Something cool like that. But a sudden, insistent electronic beeping pushed itself into my dream. I wondered what it was...and then, even though it was the wrong time period for my dream, someone said, "Is that a car alarm?" This incongruity pushed me awake. It was 3:00 am.

And the beeping was still there.

"Who the hell isn't resetting their car alarm?" I thought, thinking the beeping was coming from outside. But it wasn't.

Now The Wife stirred. "What's that?" she asked.

"I don't know," I replied. But by now I was awake enough to realize that it was coming from inside the apartment.

I staggered out toward the living room, and the beeping grew louder. The Wife stumbled behind me. When I got to the living room, I homed in the sound...just in time to see one of the cats go running away...from our cordless phone's base. Which cat? I couldn't tell; it was dark. But there was no doubt: The beeping was the phone's ringtone.

I haven't heard that phone ring in so long that I couldn't even remember its ringtone. We turned off the ringer on our phone and let the machine do all the answering three phones and eleven years ago, so I had no hope of recognizing the phone's ringtone on first hearing. But I picked the phone up and silenced it.

Whichever cat that was, had managed to press the "Handset Locator" button. The one that, you know, makes the phone ring, so you can find it. How did that cat do this? No idea. Which cat was it? No idea.

Took me another ninety minutes to get back to sleep, though. And I had to be up at 6:00.

Stupid cats.