I turned the faucet off at the kitchen sink and drank from the glass I had filled, glancing at the clock. 2:08 a.m. The motion sensor light affixed to our garage snapped on, lighting up my peripheral vision. Movement in the backyard. I hustled to the window.
A group of people strode into our yard through the back gate, leaving it open behind them. I counted. Twelve in total. What on earth? They moved with purpose and hollered to each other, my heartrate cranking higher with each of their steps—which were closing in on our back door. Husband was out of town for work and the girls were asleep; I was the only one awake to manage what might come. The two locks on the back door now seemed skimpy.
No good can come of a group of strangers—teenagers, I saw as they approached—prowling in a person’s backyard in the night. Were they headed for the door? Would they pound on it when they got there? Maybe kick it in?
Five feet from the house, the group swerved left and cut through our side gate. I jogged to the dining room, grabbed the phone, and hovered my finger above the nine as I watched from the window over the buffet. The kids advanced through the side yard and spilled onto the sidewalk in front of our home. Their voices rose in laughter. One shoved another in play. The nighttime rovers strutted off down the avenue and vanished.
I set down the phone and crawled back into bed. Sleep was far off.
After that night, I would awaken some mornings to our gates hanging open. Who had passed through our backyard while we slept? Great droves of humanity? Or just a single nocturnal sojourner? It seemed our house, midway down the block, was a passageway for people traipsing through. We didn’t spy any stolen possessions or damage to our property, though, so what was the problem? The question roiled my stomach. The idea that people sauntered by our windows while we snoozed on the other side of the glass rattled me.
Several years ago, Husband purchased security cameras for our place. After their installation, he spent his mornings sipping coffee and scrolling through the previous night’s footage on his phone.
“Anything interesting?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said.
And day after day, his response was the same.
On our family trip in the summer of 2019, Husband still reviewed the recordings each morning.
“Anything new?” I said over a cup of hotel coffee one day.
He shook his head. “Before we got cameras, I thought there were all kinds of nefarious activities going on in our backyard every night.” He took a drink from his mug. “Yeah, not so much.”
But the next morning on our trip, he stared at his phone, his eyes sparking.
“Something exciting this time?” I said.
“There were three different cats in our yard last night.”
“Hm.” Who did the roving creatures belong to? Or were they feral animals out for a good time?
The day after, Husband again reported his findings. “Two more cats are coming around now.”
“Surprised we didn’t trick them with our lights on timers,” I said.
“They’re smarter than people, apparently.”
We finished our trip with Husband’s feline tally totaling six. But while the number of furry-footed trespassers increased in our absence, their nighttime presence disappeared upon our return. The human yard travelers of the past maybe spotted our security cameras and avoided the place. But the cats didn’t care. They knew when we were home and when we weren’t.
And what happens in the night stays in the night. Or something.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.