If you haven't read last week's blog post, then you need to scroll down and do that before you read this one. This post is a sequel to that post.
How blind I was not to realize what was going to happen on Friday. We’d seen a bad omen earlier in the day but just didn’t recognize it as such at the time. The whole family had walked the dog down to Kroger so we could get a few movies at the Red Box out front. On the way back home, we saw a muskrat rooting around over by the veteran’s memorial at the VFW. Wildlife + War. I should have picked up on it, but I didn’t. I didn’t realize the portal in our house was going open again that night, which would call me --and Romy the Bat Slayer-- back into battle.
We’d had two good nights of sleep in the Miller household. Apparently we had grown complacent already because it caught us off guard when at about 9 pm, exactly 48 hours after the blood match that was reported in last week’s blog post, the portal to bat-hell burst open and another bat flew into our living room and then upstairs. Wyatt and I were in the living room, coincidentally enough watching a Lego Batman cartoon, while Danielle and Josselyn were upstairs in Josselyn’s room. Wyatt and I saw the bat at the same time. I yelled out, “Bat! Close the door!” loud enough for Danielle to hear upstairs. Wyatt curled up on the couch and released a ceaseless scream that sounded like an amplified version of the sound a lobster is supposed to make when it’s dropped in boiling water. Danielle’s maternal instincts overrode her anti-bat instincts and she came out of Josselyn’s bedroom to check on Wyatt. When she did that, she saw the bat had flown into our bedroom—the historic battleground of yesteryear (Tuesday night). She slammed the door, escorted Wyatt into Josselyn’s room, and then shut the door, leaving me alone out in the hallway. I wouldn’t be alone for long though. I’d never gone into bat-battle by myself before, and I wasn’t going to start now. I needed to suit up and then track down my old comrade, the legendary Romy the Bat Slayer.
That night, Romy wasn’t waiting for me outside the bedroom door. I had to go looking for him. You wouldn’t think the Van Helsing of the cat world would be too hard to track down, but he was nowhere to be found. Eventually though, through a mutual friend, I tracked down the old orange tabby codger. He was living down in the Keys, flying under the radar by shacking up in an old houseboat with a cute little Calico named Cookie. When he saw me get out of the cab he sighed and then yelled out, “I’m too old for this *meow,* Everett! Get back in that cab and go home!”
Even though he didn’t want to see me, we’d been through so much together that he invited me onto his houseboat for a saucer of milk. There was a little black-and-white TV on and I could hear it in the background. It was the beginning of an old 80 ’s TV show. I listened to the intro: “In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team." How appropriate.
“We need you, Romero.” I said. Few people know his real name. “The family needs you. We’ve got another bat in the bedroom.”
“What about Skunk Breath?” he asked, his voice dripping with disgust.
“His name is Eli, Romy, and he’s a good dog.”
“Why don’t you take that big oaf in there with you if he’s so good?”
“I don’t need a dog in there with me Romy. I need you.”
“I’ve got a good life here,” he said. “You’re on your own this time.”
Disappointed, I got back in the taxi and then flew back to the bedroom door. When I landed, I couldn’t believe it. Romy the Bat Slayer was standing there waiting for me. “What changed your mind?” I asked as I patted him on the back.
“I had a dream last night,” he said. He was very serious, not purring at all. “A dream I couldn’t ignore. I stood at the enormous doors of the hall of great feline warriors of generations past. It is called Meow-halla. The doors opened and I was greeted by a beautiful female saber-toothed tiger. Her eyes were intense and she wore the blood of mastodons as makeup. She escorted me into the great hall where I saw the legendary cat warriors like the enormous and green Battle Cat who had battled Skeletor with He-Man. The Thundercats were there too, and hundreds of others. They were lapping warm milk out of golden bejeweled goblets.” As Romy spoke, I noticed a tattoo he’d gotten just above his paw, on his furry forearm. It was of a bloody dog snout. He’d surely gotten the tattoo to commemorate his survival after he’d been pinned down during the first of the Yellow Labrador Offensives back in the winter of 2012. Tears came to his eyes as he continued. “The Saber Toothed maiden told me that if I went into this battle, whenever I die, whether it is today or years in the future, there will be a spot for Romy the Bat Slayer in Meow-halla and there will be a black suitcase for me to curl up in and sleep for all eternity.” He paused to gather his emotions. “This is it, though, Everett. One last battle. We shall live together or we shall die together. Regardless, we will be together as brothers in arms.” We embraced as only those do who have survived what others have not. I opened the door and Romy the Bat Slayer walked into the room, claws out and head held high. The door shut ominously behind him and I waited until it was safe to join him inside.
I threw my rake into the room, then covered my head with my shield, and dove inside, slamming the door behind me. Romy wasn’t doing what I expected him to be doing. He was lying on the bed, looking quite comfortable. I gave him a look that said, “Really?” and he responded with a look that said, “I’m storing up my energy for when the cat poop hits the fan.” The bat was circling fast above us, like a vulture on methamphetamines. Like the bat on Tuesday, this was not the small animal you are probably picturing. This bat was enormous. It was so big it looked like the illegitimate lovechild of a wookie and a griffin or maybe like a silverback gorilla on a hang glider. Against my past experience and Romy’s opinion, I decided to attempt the humane thing again by opening up the window to see if I could get the bat to fly out. I had no plans to eat the bat or to mount it above my fireplace, so I wanted to let it go peacefully. This time I opened the window from the top down (we have those fancy new windows) so the bat’s flight pattern would take it close enough so it might fly out. It kept flying in spastic circles, coming closer and closer to my head, but refusing to fly out the window. I started to get the feeling that it was no coincidence that this particular bat was in our bedroom. It must have something to do with the bat I killed on Tuesday, some sort of family vengeance. This suspicion was confirmed when the bat flew close to my ear and I heard him yell out, “My name is Bat-nito Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”
I gave him a couple of minutes to fly out the window, but he still refused. He had come for revenge and he wasn’t leaving until he got it. I wondered if he was having trouble getting out because of the light in the room, so I decided to turn out the lights and duck down on the ground. When I would turn the lights back on, he’d be gone. That was the plan anyway. I flipped the light off and crouched down. I could hear the flapping of the wings every time he flew by, as well as the threats he breathed out at me each time. He cursed my children and my mother. I turned on the lights and couldn’t believe what I saw. There were now two bats flying around the bedroom! Another bat had flown in the window when the lights were off. “Holy Meow!” Romy screamed. “What’s next, a witch on a broom?” I lunged for the window, slamming it closed so no more reinforcements could fly in. I got it closed in time, but now Romy the Bat Slayer and I had two bats flying over our heads.
The second bat was more aggressive than the first. He was obviously Bat-nito’s bigger, less stable brother. This new bat flew close to my head one time… just once. The next time he came around the room, he met the business end of my battle rake. When his body hit the floor, I felt the house shift a little on its foundation. In that moment, Sun Tzu went back in time and wrote an introduction to The Art of War that said, "If you do not have time to read this book, just watch what is about to happen and you will get the gist." With blood-lust running through my veins, I swung on Bat-nito with my battle rake. He bounced off the rake and then against the wall. He fell behind the dresser. I used Wyatt’s fishing net to pull the bat, who was releasing blood curdling screams, out from behind the dresser. When I got him out, the beast tried to take off again. But in that moment, Romy the Bat Slayer, the feline of legend, jumped off of the bed… in slow motion. It was like Matthew Mcconaughy in Reign of Fire, jumping through the air yielding a battle ax and landing on a dragon’s back. With the power of a hundred lions Romy roared out, “For Meow-halla!” as he soared through the air. Romy landed with his claws on the bat’s wing, pinning it down. The bat opened and closed its fanged jaws. Romy stared him in the eyes in a scene that was not unlike when Sigourney Weaver comes face to face with the alien and it has thick strands of protoplasmic saliva connecting his upper jaw to his lower. I raised the battle rake above my head and brought it down upon the struggling villain, ending his reign of terror. Bat-nito Montoya was dead.
Romy and I stood above the vanquished griffin-wookie and caught our breath. For just a moment, the earth paused on its axis, just to mark the importance of the moment. We would find out later that an elderly 21-year-old bobcat, a medicine-cat of the Igmu Tribe of Native American felines, had a vision in that moment, which resulted in his tribe giving Romy the honorary Igmu name of “Thunder Whiskers.” We would also later hear that in that moment a renowned Danish painter received the inspiration for a portrait of a Bengal tiger and a fearless warrior standing over the carcass of an annihilated mythical flying beast with a leaf rake stuck in its black hellish heart. Roughly translated, the Danish title of the portrait means “Demise of the Wing-ed Sasquatch.”
I scooped up Bat-nito’s brother and chunked him out the window with the disrespect that goon deserved. But with Bat-nito it was different. We respected him as an adversary, and understood his motivation. We considered collecting firewood and building a funeral pyre for him and pushing his burning body out onto a cold Scandinavian lake to send him off to his own eternal hall of warriors, Bat-halla. But instead we chose to just drop him out of the second story window more gently than we had his brother. The battle was won. But now the portal had to be closed.
Romy didn’t say much to me after all the smoke had cleared. He collected his payment from me (a second can of cat food), told me, “This was the last one, Everett. I’ve earned my golden goblet of milk in Meow-halla. So don’t come looking for me again. Cookie and I are thinking about sailing around the world, maybe visiting the Great Pyramids to see the cat hieroglyphics.” After Romy the Bat Slayer walked off, I opened up the door to tell my family the news that they were free once again. After they finished weeping from gratitude, Danielle agreed to go on a brief journey to retrieve the magical tool I needed to close up the portal to hell that had opened around the pocket door between the living room and dining room. When she returned with the duct tape, I completed the job. Finally, it was time for a well deserved night of sleep.
Although we got to bed very late Friday night, we slept well. Sunday night we crashed early and slept like babies. Then on Monday morning, my day off, fifteen minutes before my alarm was to go off, Danielle startled me awake. “I’m sorry to wake you up early, but down in the dining room, there’s another… bat.”
