After a reasonable drive back from visiting my family for Thanksgiving, James and I arrived back at our apartment and lugged our things upstairs to settle back in for the night. We ate some pumpkin pie for dinner (because we’re grown ups!). We had found a starter pack for Disney Infinity on sale while out of town and tried it out, managing to make our way through the first part of the Avengers playset. (Thor for the win, by the way)

The cats had been wandering around as cats do. They’re usually a little weird after we get back from being out of town, all “Oh hey, the bowls of food you left me the other day, I ate them all in 3 hours and was mad at you for 48 hours afterward.” While we’re in the middle of trying to understand the Toy Box mode, we hear a scuffle and scattering. When we turned to look at the cats, there was a third creature flopping and fluttering.

“Oh no, a bird! The cats are going to eat that poor bird!”

Sudden realization from James, that spilled into me at the same time: “That’s not a bird, that’s a baaaAATT WHY IS THERE A BAT WHAT DO WE DO WHAT ABOUT RABIES WHAT’S HAPPENING AAAAAHH DON’T LET THEM TOUCH IT!!”

You see, when there’s something that’s not the other cat flopping around, these cats hop to action.

Seriously, still had controllers in our hands when the bat-realization hit.

The bat flew and thumped into our studio space with the cats behind and going all “HEY LOOK A BAT HOW DO I CATCH IT?”, except, you know, with their paws and their huge excitable eyes.

We slammed the door shut, then immediately panicked about cats actually touching the bat, because hey, we watch a lot of SyFy movies and assume the worst with critters. Cats were lured out (almost begrudgingly) with treats to a separate room, then shut up. Then, back to panicking.

“Who do we call?”
“How did it get in?”
“That’s a freakin’ bat in our apartment”
“Animal control?”
“How did a bat get in?”

After a few more minutes of panicking, we realized we didn’t hear said bat moving.

“What if the cats actually killed it?”
“IT CAN’T BE DEAD THAT MAKES IT WORSE.”
“How do we make it leave? IT MUST STILL LIVE SO IT CAN LEAVE”
“That’s a freakin’ bat in our apartment.”

Frantic Googling had suggestions we couldn’t focus on to read, eventually leading to us calling an Animal Control number. Which provided a polite answering machine message about being closed and calling the police if there was an emergency situation.

“Is a bat an emergency?!?”
“THERE’S STILL A BAT IN OUR APARTMENT.”

Calling the number provided in the message led to a polite police man who informed us that the area Anima Control actually doesn’t deal with bats (A bat? Uh, I mean, a really big flying dog. Someone come get this sudden creature!). However, from his experience, the police man said that if we opened all the windows in the room and had the lights on, the bat would eventually leave in favor of the night. (Add your favorite “I AM THE NIGHT” jokes here, folks). After confirming we knew how to properly open both the windows and screens in said windows (There is still an actual bat in our apartment and how did it get there, you see…), we put on coats and gloves and snuck into the studio to open all available windows and find the little intruder.

We were dressed for success/battle for sure.

The cats had been focused on a very specific corner of the room, but we couldn’t find the bat….until we realized the small fluff ball that looked like a cat toy was actually the bat all still and shrunk up against the wall.

“Is it dead??”
“I dunno. What do we do?”
“Hope he’s not dead. A BOX! Or some other disposable thing to scoop him into.”

I stood bat-guard while James went to find boxes of some kind. (Luckily, we are forgetful/lazy when it comes to tossing out boxes from ordering things on the Internet). I stared at the bat for a long time and realized he/she was, in fact, breathing -very quick “Where-am-I-what-is-happening” type of breathing.

This bat seriously looked like one of our cats’ toys.

“The bat! It’s alive!”
“Good! Um…i hope this box works then.”

When James set the box on top of the bat and slowly scooted it away from the edge of the wall, we heard scuffling again – Yes! Alive! And when James slid the other hunk of cardboard under the box so he could lift it up, the scuffles and flutters got louder.

“Well, now we…chuck him out? We’re 3 stories up, that’s terrible.”
“He’s active, so if we gradually lower the bottom cardboard…”

As the bottom cardboard slowly lowered….ZOOM! Wee little bat made a break for it and flew off as quickly as those leather wings allowed.

“…..that was a freakin’ bat in our apartment.”
“….we just caught and released a freakin’ bat that was in our apartment…”
“WE’RE AWESOME!”

After much high-fiving, followed by some sporadic disinfecting of various floor/items, we let the cats out. They were annoyed at the lack of bat. Regardless: We searched for any open holes or strange vents that would allow a bat inside, and found none, and can only assume he followed us in when we were bringing in our things from the car after our trip.

Either that, or he was sent to give us a message from some other bat guy about getting that Marvel Disney Infinity pack instead of a DC Comics game…

The bat was so excited to not be inside or around cats or boxes.