It’s been a long time since I’ve written on here, and a lot of shitty things have happened, but I’ve decided that diving into all of that right now is ~ not the move ~ so last week while my husband and I (and our dog) were driving home to New Orleans from Richmond after the holidays, I sat in the car and asked the universe for a light moment…for something to happen that I could write about, and it would make people giggle instead of feel depressed. And then immediately after this plea, this phone call fell into my lap.
Some necessary background information: Along our drive, we stopped somewhere in Mississippi for the night and decided to finish the final four hours the next day. We stayed at a random motel — clean, but nothing fancy.
We quickly learned that the walls of this motel room were paper thin. A torrential downpour started outside at 10 pm, and it sounded like it was happening inside the room. If you like listening to a “rainfall” playlist on Spotify to fall asleep, you might have enjoyed it. Except instead of “soft pitter patter,” you selected “wild jungle deluge” and then cranked the volume all the way up and placed the speaker right next to your ear, and instead of falling asleep your goal was actually to stay awake in fear that the room might fill up with water.
Some other sounds we experienced throughout the night:
1. The world’s largest truck engine turning on, also seemingly in our room
2. An angry animal scratching at something near the TV/dresser
3. A man with a mallet, hammering the outside of our wall over and over again
4. Our dog’s nails click-clacking on the floor as he paced back and forth
After getting zero sleep, we got in the car the next morning and promptly forgot about the weird night of noises. Which might seem questionable, but there were too many of them to make one particular one stick out.
An hour of driving goes by. Addy receives a phone call from an unknown number. He, being unafraid of strangers, unlike myself, answers it.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice pops on over the car’s speakers. “Hi, this is the front desk of the hotel you just checked out of. Is this Addison? From room 314?”
Addy confirmed that it was.
“Did you forget your ca-?” The phone cut off the end of the man’s question. I thought maybe he said “cash” — did we forget our cash? I didn’t remember bringing any cash into the room. Maybe our cap? I also didn’t bring a hat.
Addy didn’t understand either. “Sorry, what?”
“Your CAT,” the man repeated calmly. “Did you forget your cat?”
Addy and I slowly turned to look at each other.
“Um…no,” Addy said to the voice, confused. “We don’t have a cat. We have a dog, and he’s with us.”
There was a long pause on the other end, as if the man wasn’t expecting this response and was unsure how to proceed, and then he softly said, “Ok, thank you” and hung up.
Addy and I sat in silence for several long seconds. I was the first one to break it.
“WHAT?!” I screech-cackled. “They found a CAT in our room?!”
Addy started laughing.
“They found a CAT in our room!” I yelled again. “We stayed in that room all night with a CAT…I knew I heard something in the dresser last night! The scratching!”
“We should have opened the drawer,” Addy said.
“If we had opened the dresser, that cat would have attacked us…it sounded so angry.”
“Who put the cat in there, the people who stayed in that room before us? How long had it been in there??”
“Whoever put it in there didn’t just “forget” their cat and not come back for it after that long…it seems like it was intentionally left behind.”
“How did they FIND the cat? Did they hear it scratching while they were cleaning the room, or did they randomly open up the drawers and there it was, leaping out to escape?”
We sat in shocked awe.
I can’t believe you didn’t ask that man more questions!” I yelled.
“I can’t believe HE didn’t ask US more questions!” Addy yelled back. “He thought we put our cat in a dresser and then just FORGOT about it!? Why was he so calm on the phone?? What’s he going to do with the cat now??”
I almost called the man back to ask what was happening to the cat and if they’d found the owners. And also if it looked like it might get along with a 9-year-old beagle.
The moral of this story is that if you hear weird noises in your hotel room and think there’s any percent chance that it could be an angry animal that someone put in the dresser, it probably is. And also that the universe is great at answering your wishes (if your wish is for something weird and giggly to happen to you).
Memoirable Moments 