No escape

So... Charlotte is getting hammered with a thunderstorm right now. Actually, hammered might be too strong a word, but there is thunder and lightening and the rain is a-comin' down on this drought-ridden city.

Predictably, at the first flash of lightning and the first rumble of thunder, my faithful friend and alarm clock Richie begins to panic. It starts with an abrupt head lift up off the floor and a glance in my direction. I'm assuming he is checking to see if I heard it as well. Then the ears go flat back. The eyes get wide. The tongue starts hanging out and begins to drip, drip, drip onto the carpet. And then, just like Seabiscuit before him, he's off.

He starts by running around the coffee table in a circle, to see if perhaps the storm is only located in that corner of the room. Then he begins to widen his search for a storm-free area. He encompasses his favorite spot under the end table, rejects it and comes to stand beside me. He looks beseechingly up at me on the couch, wondering if that's a storm-free zone and if I will share it with him. In his younger days, he would jump up onto the couch in a panic and try to climb onto the back, getting as high as possible. Perhaps to avoid the flood he fears is coming? Or maybe he thinks the storm is only on the ground where he is.

When all these efforts prove fruitless he heads for the back door. I think somewhere in his mind, it is only the inside of the house that has betrayed him by allowing a storm in his presence. SURELY, if he can get to his backyard, where all things good happen, he will be free. After about ten minutes of me reassuring him that he won't like it outside (oh, if only he would listen when I talk...) I finally get up to prove to him that the storm is, in fact, worse outside. I open the back door and he bolts. Keen to put as much distance between him and house as possible. Sadly, several seconds later, reality kicks in and he realizes that the storm is not only worse out here, but there is also wet stuff falling on him from the sky. And so, with a panicked yet resigned look, he returns to the back door to be let in. Which I allow. After he sits. And I say 'I told you so.'

After this point, he stops looking for a way away from the storm and begins to find a way to make the whole thing less painful for himself. Somehow, being in a small enclosed space is his preference. (One morning I woke up after a pretty nasty overnight storm and he had wormed his way underneath my bed and was so tight under there that I had to help him get out.) As we speak he is sitting under my desk, curled in a ball between my feet. And my poor pumpkin is shaking like a leaf. And I've tried to reassure him, but mentally he is somewhere where I can't reach him. Come back, Richie! Come back!