A fear in the night

We arrived home from our weekend trip to NYC last night around 10:30pm. Came home, checked the mail and each took a shower after a long, but very enjoyable weekend.  More about the NYC trip and a few pics to come later ...

I let Chloe sleep in our bed last night because I missed her from the weekend. There's nothing like snuggling up in your own bed after being gone for a few days. And that we did. 

At about 3:30am, Chloe perked up and started to growl at the end of the bed. I nudged her a few times to make her stop, but she continued for a few minutes more. Finally Andi woke up and yelled for her to stop. (Chloe does this sometimes when she's too lazy to jump off the bed; she wants you to lift her down ...which is annoying at 3:30am). Hence, why she doesn't sleep in our bed Andi would insert here.  But Chloe continued to growl until Andi and I both heard a noise inside our otherwise silent house. We both sat up, listened for a second more, then Andi jumped out of bed (in his underwear!) and checked the back door. Nothing. Then he walked through the dining room toward the front door before running back into the bedroom.

"Get ready to call 911," he shouted as he grabbed some pants out of the hamper.

OMG. What the hell is happening? I grabbed Chloe and my phone, and hopped out of bed to follow him into the livingroom. By now, I could hear a jingling at the front door; someone was trying to break into our house! 

We live in an old duplex built in 1912, which has one main door leading into an enclosed porch and two "front" doors inside the porch - one for each duplex unit. Andi and I own the house and live on the main level; we rent the upstairs floor to another couple about our age. If you can visualize, the man breaking into our house was inside the porch and removing the door knob on our front door.

"Who the hell are you? What do you want?" Andi shouted to the man from inside our door.

The man didn't answer, just kept jingling the door knob from the porch side.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Andi shouted again. In the meantime, I called 911 to report the break in.

The man who said he was looking for Katie obviously had the wrong house. And obviously very, very intoxicated. Finally after Andi yelled for him to leave for what felt like an eternity, the man did.

The 911 operator said they'd send a police officer to our block.  Don't know if they ever found the guy wandering down the street; don't know if he ever made it to Katie's house or if he just passed out on some park bench nearby.

When it was safe, Andi opened the door and saw that the entire outside knob had been removed from our door. A few more minutes and he could have been inside. We do have a dead bolt on our door so I hope (hope!) that would have prevented him from coming in all the way.

Serioulsy though, it was the scariest thing that has happened to us in a while. I was shaking like a leaf; Andi was too (and it takes a lot to get him rattled). By now it was about 4:00am and I was awake. I laid in bed for the next few hours and kept thinking about how much worse it could have been. Or ... how horrible it must be if something really bad like that happens to you. How violated you must feel.

Thank goodness for our little Chloe girl. What a true hero she was for waking us up and keepng at it. Glad it all ended OK.