Cat on a Wet Tin Roof

Okay - extremely bizarre experience this morning.

Woke up around 4am, just kind of tossing and turning. Dobby, my baby kitty who sleeps on my feet, got perturbed from the motion and got up to do his normal early morning wanderings. Otis, the other foot-of-the-bed sleeper, hissed his obligatory "I hate you" as Dobby passed by. Normal morning stuff.

Drifted in and out of consciousness for about 45 minutes when Otis jumped off the bed and goes over to the window. Our bedroom windows look right out the front of the house, on top of our porch roof. The evenings have been rather pleasant, so the windows have been open to allow for the breezes. Otis climbs up next to the screen and starts hissing. I'm thinking, "What kind of squirrel or bird is taunting Otis now?" I roll over to look, and I see a cat on the roof.

We have several trees with branches hanging over the porch, so while I've never seen a cat on the roof, it's not a complete impossibility. So, in my sleepy state, I wander over to the window. "Hey, Kitty - here, kitty kitty" - thinking that this feline doesn't look like any of the normal neighborhood cats. Then he starts to purr. A very familiar purr.

Christ on a cracker. It's Dobby.

Between my heart stopping, my lungs collapsing, my fumbling for the screen latch and knocking everything off of my night stand, I woke up Joe, who thought I'd overslept the alarm.

"Dobby's on the porch roof!!!"
"That's impossible."
Meanwhile, I open the screen and Dobby wanders in, then immediately senses the tension and hides under the bed, thinking he's in big trouble with Mommy.

"Dobby was on the freakin' porch roof! I just let him in!"
Now I'm crazy searching for how he could have gotten out there. Being near a very busy road, our cats are strictly indoors-only. I'm a freak (just ask Joe) about making sure they don't do get out. So I'm now wide awake, panicked, and thinking there's some hole in our house. Then I get to the other bedroom window. Which is wide open. Including screen.

We put our decorations on the house last night, and Joe climbed out the window to put the swaggy things over the front of the house. He didn't close it, and I didn't notice. I think I was distracting him with my "that one doesn't look right" comments that I'm prone to make when I'm cranky.

Meanwhile, windows are shut, Dobby's out of hiding, and I'm still in shock. Looking out over the dew-covered tin roof, you see tiny paw prints from the window, to the edge, to near the trees, to the back of the porch, to the other windows, to where he harrassed Otis. God bless Otis for his hatred of Dobby. I'm going to try not to think what COULD have happened. Yeesh.