"There's something in my closet"

...That's what I said, waking my mom up for probably the millionth time in my life. Her response was the usual, "Pam, go back to bed. There's nothing there." What she didn't know is that this time I really wasn't sleepwalking. I had been awakened by a noise in my closet and I had lain there telling myself I was dreaming but I kept hearing the noises. I had lain there quite a long time actually, trying to get the nerve to jump out of bed and go to her because I knew I wasn't dreaming and the noises wouldn't stop.

Finally I had the nerve to jump out of bed and race down the hall to mommy and when I kept insisting that I wasn't sleeping she got up to show me that, once again, there was nothing in my closet. She went into my room with me following on her heels and turned the light on. Just as she reached for the closet door, she heard it too. It was a shuffling noise and it kind of squeaked. She looked at me nervously and I could see she was thinking, "hey, there really is something in there," but she still reached for the door and opened it.

There in the back of my closet was our cat Sarah Jane and she was having kittens. It was such a relief to see her there. Mommy said, "See, it's nothing to be scared of. There's always a good excuse for these kinds of things." Then she proceeded to make sure Sarah Jane was comfortable and had everything she needed to have her babies. She shut the door and told me to go back to bed and we would check on her in the morning.

I was still up half the night, worried about the cat and kittens. I finally fell asleep and I missed the school bus. She took me to school and unfortunately it happened to be the first day at the Junior High School across town because the wall had fallen at our school and they had to close it. I was mortified as I went in late. The grouchy school secretary was mad because she had to show me where the auditorium was which didn't make me feel any better. She stomped down the hall and slammed the door open with a loud crash and I had to walk in to the stares of the whole school.

Something which any teenage would be cringing about - and I was.