Today it rained.

Yes, water fell from the sky in California!

Not only rain, it hailed some and there was some awesome thunder and lightning. It was close and it was loud!

My husband took my daughter to school and my son and I planned to crawl into my bed and watch the storm through the window. That sounded heavenly. I’ve been working so much, I haven’t had any lazy mornings, but with the power flickering, no work would get done. I also wanted to take advantage of the one on one time with my boy. I could enjoy some cuddles before he grows any older, lounge in our pjs, and I could enjoy my coffee slowly.

That was the plan.

Just as half my little family were off and the front door closed, chaos followed:

Immediately there was a major downpour and thunder that shook the house!

Max

Max hates to get wet and I knew he had not gone out the dog door to pee since the previous evening. Just as my thoughts turned to him, my son started yelling from upstairs, “Mom! Max is peeing on the carpet!” I yelled something back that was drowned out by the thunder, sprinted up the stairs two at a time, grabbed Max, and tossed the poor terrified pup into the laundry room. I planned to rescue him as soon as I was sure he was done relieving himself and I could clean up the carpet. I ran back upstairs to soak up the urine before it soaked into the rug any more, sprayed some carpet cleaner on it and ran back down to collect Max.

When I opened the door, he bolted into the house, the laundry room was a pee puddle, which didn’t concern me so much as the wet paw prints and dripping sweater Max was wearing. I pounced on him with a towel, tore off his sweater (gently of course), and much to his dismay, rinsed his paws under the faucet. Luckily he hadn’t tracked pee too far into the house and we there’s all tile floor downstairs, so clean up is not so bad. I let him go and cleaned the tile floor of both rooms, then went to search for his anxiety drops. I looked in the bathroom cabinet first, no drops, but I found dog poop on the floor. At least he went to the bathroom, I thought, laughing at myself for the pun.

As I came out from cleaning that floor, my son shouts, “Mom, Max just pooped under the table!” I took a breathe, collected the cleaning supplies yet again and cleaned that mess up, hoping there was nothing left in the poor dog. Light continued to flash and thunder roared outside.

All I wanted was to watch the lightning with my kid.

And to drink my coffee, which was now ice cold, untouched on the table. With the four year long drought here in California, I wasn’t sure my son had ever seen lightning before. And rain was such a rare treat, I wanted to savor it. If I had already had my coffee and gotten dressed, we would have gone outside and danced in it!

I headed to the kitchen to heat up my cup and get Max his drops, but Max weaved in and out between my legs as thunder sounded again from farther away. I tripped over him four times, and finally called for my son to take him upstairs with him so I could walk!  I found his drops and my son and I wrangled Max out from under the bed where he was hiding and I was able to give him his drops. With warm coffee and finally a break in the madness, we cozied up in my bed, but the lightening had subsided, the thunder gone, and the rain had let up, too.

We still snuggled and read for a good long time.

Rocco

Rocco found us and pressed in between us, trying to morph his gigantic body into us or something. He was scared, too. Part of him was draped over my leg and part over my son’s and both of us ended up with a leg fallen asleep. Rocco purred and kneaded his sharp claws into our dead legs. I wondered where Rascal could be.

Rascal

When we came downstairs for lunch (which wasn’t too much longer, Max’s escapades had taken up most of our morning) I checked every room and cupboard (you never know). We have child locks still on all our kitchen cabinets. My kids are past the age where we need them, but they come in handy in keeping out cats! No sign of Rascal in or out, so I assumed he had gone out when my daughter left and he had found somewhere dry to hide. It was too wet to make his way back, yet.

As I grilled up some cheese sandwiches, I heard a faint meow. I stopped and listened. There it was again, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It sounded faint, so I checked all the rooms, cupboards, outside the doors, everywhere I could think of, over and over again, while constantly going back to make sure I didn’t burn our lunch. I wouldn’t hear anything for a while and then there it was again. We stopped to eat and then I got my boy to join the hunt and for a half hour we searched until finally we gave up. He had to come out eventually and this wasn’t the first time, by a long shot.

The rain had stopped and the sun was out, so I figured it was safe to assume the power would remain on. I sat at the table with my laptop to start working when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Between the two doors to the cabinet under the kitchen sink I could see a flash of white and a little nose poking out. The doors were being pushed apart by Rascal’s head, but the child latches were preventing them from opening more than a crack. I had opened that cupboard multiple times, even left it open for a few seconds while I grabbed dish soup from their and then put it back again. No cat had come out or made his presence known then! Yet he had clearly been in their the whole time. How he managed to squeeze all of hid big, fluffy 12 lbs through less than an inch gap I don’t know. He pretended to be stuck behind the pipes from the sink, so rather than wait for him to figure it out and knock everything out of the cupboard in the process, I moved the garbage can and a few thing and pulled him out of there. I put stuff back into the cupboard with Rascal aggressively rubbing against every side of me as if I had just saved his precious life.

Dragon

I noticed the lizard’s heat lamp wasn’t on so I went over to flip the switch. No change. The light had burnt up. And it was cold today. I guess I’ll be needing to go to the pet store and soon because otherwise I’ll just worry about him constantly. I sighed deeply and tried to take my mind off of Dragon for the time being.

I sat back down to my computer to begin my day’s work. My son sat down to his computer, as well, and all looked peaceful for a moment. Then in walks the family.

“We’re home! Did you get a lot of work done?”

I visualize smacking my head into the table.