An Early Morning Game of "Spot the Icky"

I believe my wife and I may be living with a hound cat and an attack cat. Boots, the black and white one woke us a few minutes ago. He was running around on the bed, staring up at the ceiling with his front paws against the wall and barking (yes, he barks when he spots prey. No kidding.) It turns out that he was tracking a house centipede as it made its way around the crown molding of the bedroom.

Given a choice, I tend to let house centipedes go their own way. They are very creepy, surprisingly fast and are predators to smaller creepies. On this occasion, however, I could ignore the bug but not the barking cat (imagine a short percussive meow. Sort of like "mra...mra." It's pretty cute during the day, but not when we're trying to sleep.) So with tissue in hand, I reluctantly stood up on the bed to kill the leggy little creature.

That was where the real drama started. In an attempt to avoid an ugly mess on the wall, I attempted to grab the house centipede from the sides instead of simply squashing it. Unfortunately, this allowed it to leave behind a half dozen or so legs in the tissue and begin sprinting down my arm. I immediately felt a case of the willies coming on and flung it to the floor without thinking. At this point Bucky, the gray cat was in pursuit of the little beast, and flushed it out from under the bed where it became tissue fodder.

Much too much drama for 3 AM. Maybe now I can get back to sleep.