1.18am, and I become vaguely aware of a house alarm blaring away in the distance.
Nikki: "Is that our alarm?"
I listen more carefully, in my sleep-befuddled state.
Me: "Don't think so. It *is* close though."
I get out of bed and plod over to the window. When I pull back the curtain I can see our alarm box flashing its blue light angrily.
Me: "Fuck! It IS ours!"
As I open the bedroom door and the internal alarm becomes clearly audible, several thoughts crowd my still-not-fully-awake mind.
Should I go back and get my baseball bat?
Should I turn the alarm off BEFORE I check downstairs, alerting any intruder to the fact there's someone awake?
Has someone noticed the appliances being delivered and decided it's a good time to go on the rob, while they're all still in boxes?
I quickly decide plenty of light and an aggressive demeanour is the best approach to scare the intruder away. I cancel the alarm, turn the lights on and start downstairs.
Halfway down, I hear a noise in the kitchen. Bloody hell. How have they got in without making a noise?
I reach the hall, turn all the downstairs lights on and march boldly into the kitchen with a no-nonsense face on and the most don't-mess-with-me posture I can muster. I come face to face with the intruder.
A young tortie-and-white kitten, cowering at the other end of the kitchen.
She utters a frightened miaow and scuttles under the nearest cupboard unit.
Then I remember the fitters have just the day before completed coring out a 15cm hole in the wall for the ducting. A hole that presumably, from the outside, looks like a cat flap.
I retrieve the keys for the patio door, prop the kitchen door in the doorway to prevent the kitten escaping into the rest of the house, open the outside door and persuade her to go and burgle someone else, by which time Nikki has come down to check that I'm alright. With around 16 gallons of adrenaline pumping around inside me, I decide going back to bed isn't an option, so we set the coffee maker going and settle down in the lounge for some (very) early morning telly.
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2 comments:
Presumably it was a motion detector that set off the alarm? I'm surprised it went off with something so small. I thought they were usually adjusted so family pets wouldn't trigger them?
Yes, we have detectors in all the downstairs rooms. They are supposed to be pet-friendly but since we don't have a cat we've never had to test that!
The other possibility is that she jumped up on the top of the new appliances and disturbed the shock detector that would normally be screwed to the window frame, but at the moment owing to decorating is sitting loose on the window sill. Any movement of that sensor would have set it off.
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