Scratching

I'm describing a true story from last night. It's not a scary story, I'd say it's not even supernatural, but I haven't found a logical explanation yet.

So, last night. I decided to go to bed early. But no, at 2:30 a.m. a friend called—he was drunk and wanted to offer me a drink. In my sleep, I thought it wasn't a phone at all, but an alarm clock. After sending my friend off to a certain address, I decided to go back to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. I tossed and turned for a long time, counting sheep, but I couldn't fall asleep for about an hour. And then I heard a sound in my room. It was a quiet scratching—usually when my cat tries to get into my room and starts scratching his claws on my door. But here's the problem: I let the cat out to free range, feed, and breed before bed. Besides him and me, there was no one else in the apartment with claws who could scratch anywhere. There had never been any mice, not even a cockroach.

I sat up and looked around the room. It was quiet, save for the scratching, which sounded like it was recorded on tape and being rewound over and over again. It wasn't dark either, thanks to the monitor and subwoofer indicators. The room was empty. Without much fear, I began to think: if it wasn't the cat, then what? Televisions and other hard objects usually crack with temperature changes, rather than scrape against the polish on my furniture. Maybe a poorly hung garment had fallen—well, not quite fallen, but shifted slightly? But no—everything was in place. The window was also closed, as it had been terribly cold last night—so there was no draft. Then maybe the neighbors? Only the neighbors upstairs could have made such a distinct sound (as the neighbors next door were muffled). But there had been no neighbors upstairs for six months—a woman lived there; she had gone abroad to visit her son for some medical treatment. I even got up and double-checked everything (as soon as I got up, the sounds immediately stopped). I even felt a kind of excitement. But no—everything was fine. By this time, I'd completely lost sleep from straining my brain with useless thoughts. I got dressed and went outside for a smoke. The cat was circling the house; it flew into the entryway with me like a bullet. I returned with it to the apartment, fed it, and went to bed. There were no more strange sounds.

If you're really looking for a paranormal story, a fish, a rather large catfish, disappeared from my aquarium. I didn't find any remains of it, nor the cat itself, outside the aquarium. He simply vanished (five guppies had vanished from the aquarium in the same manner over the course of several months before that). The cat couldn't have eaten him: the aquarium had a lid on top—that's one thing, and he'd never shown any interest in the aquarium at all—that's two. At first, I thought maybe the fish had gotten sucked into the filter? But excuse me—there's a mesh filter there, and even fry wouldn't get sucked in! Well, that's how it is...