What did I Do Last Night? - A Writing Prompt Challenge

What did I do last night while you were snuggled warm in your bed? I was out, prowling the darkness. You day-bound animals think that you see so much more than us night dwellers, what with your sun lighting everything. But we who walk in the night use not only our eyes, but ears, whiskers, even the pads on our feet. We know the world as you never will.

Friends and foe are in the night. Until sickness swept through their families, the foxes could be either. On moonlit nights, we meet to dance but during the hunter’s moon, we sit silently above them . Now there are not enough to fear.  When their big cousins, the coyotes pass through town, everyone is silent. These are never our friends. Even the lazy dogs in their kennels cower silently as the grey ghosts trot down the alleys. Death comes too, on silent wings, as the big owls patrol the skies.

We are there to see the raccoons trot their ungainly hunchbacked way along the fence bottoms, looking for trash. We sit on the fence and watch them pass; they are too intent to be friendly. Sometimes, we meet our own out there under the stars. This is our playground. We fight and sing or watch silently as the silent figures creep along, looking for open windows. It is not our home that is threatened. Let the dogs be alert.

The rabbits come out in the early night and before dawn to feed. We are there to see them and sometimes even to catch one, their gentle quivering runs through the ground to our pads and our whiskers twitch in anticipation.

What did I do last night while you were safe in your house? I was living the night life; watching, hunting, prowling. Now as the sun lifts above the horizon, I come in to curl in an exhausted ball on your comforter, waiting for the next night and the next prowl.