I was trying to do stuff on the desk in the guest bedroom (as my desk in the living room is also where all the books are that I'm allergic to). The boys (Thimble and Colby) were acting the way they normally do in a storm. A little concerned and checking in with me periodically to make sure I was still okay with what the outdoors was doing, and mostly just interested in the activity outside the windows.
All of a sudden there came this horrible racket, like someone had emptied multiple trays of ice over my house, only it just kept on and on. And loud ... hoo boy it was loud. Both Thimble and Colby ran into the pink room (the guest bedroom) and wanted me to come make sure this was okay too since it hadn't been doing this. Ever.
Honestly, from the sounds I was a little alarmed myself, and came out to the living room (guided by two anxious giant kittens) to see what in the world was going on.
Oh. It really was just ice falling on the house. A lot of it. We were having a hailstorm. I can count on the fingers of one hand how often we've had hailstorms at this house since I moved in 8 years ago, and never did we have this much hail for this long. It was only a little more than pea-sized, so nothing majorly impressive as to size, but it lasted for about fifteen minutes.
During that fifteen minutes, I tried to go back to doing what I'd been doing. I kept getting interrupted by anxious kittens who were quite positive that the shenanigans going on outside should not be allowed and I should do something about it. All my attempts at reassurance fell by the wayside as Thimble, especially, tried to keep an eye on the hailstorm out of every window at the same time.
This meant that he was running full speed from one window to the other, up and down the hallway as he went from the living room to the pink room and back out. (The other two bedrooms at the hallway end have their windows covered due to one of them being my actual bedroom and the other being the room in which I watch tv.)
At one point he collided with me as I was going through the hallway, and he'd been bounding so high in his full-tilt run that what he collided with was my knee. He's not that tall.
About ten minutes into the hail part of the storm I heard a plaintive meowing start up. It was higher-pitched than Thimble or Colby and not really that familiar to me. I turned around in my chair at the pink room desk, and to my utter astonishment, I saw Apricot in the hallway, crying.
He had emerged from under the sofa and come out just far enough from the doorway into the hall to where he could see me. And he was meowing, asking for help.
Poor baby was so frightened by the noise of the hailstorm that he came out of his hiding spot (which normally takes care of his fear quite nicely) and wanted me to comfort him. This feral-raised cat came to a human for help with his fear.
While I was very sorry he was so frightened, and if I could have put a magic bubble around my house so the hail didn't fall on it, I certainly would have ... I was also amazed and pleased that he turned to me for help and comfort.
Moving quietly and softly, I went to him and gathered him up into my arms. I have been doing this randomly when he's not scared--sometimes I kneel down to pet him and sometimes I pick him up to pet him, so he had lost his wariness of being carried, and was I ever glad at that moment that I'd been working on that.
Carrying him, I went back into the tv room and sat down on the floor with my back against the sofa. I figured since being under the sofa was comforting to him, getting as close to being under it with him might also be helpful. I held him in my arms with my knees up so he was encased by my body as much as possible, and petted him gently and slowly the way he likes.
After a few minutes his alarm was reduced enough that he wanted back under the sofa again, and I let him go. While he was in my arms, Thimble had come to see if he was okay. Thimble's version of seeing if you're okay is to shove his face into yours, getting as close as possible, like a half-blind doctor trying to look at your irises or something. It's not particularly comforting if you're Apricot and you're already scared. Thimble didn't appreciate being waved off (read: pushed away) but he allowed as to how it was probably okay and instead he sat a few feet away, watching us closely until Apricot hid under the sofa again.
Then he wanted to go in and reassure Apricot, but as Thimble often gets side-tracked when he's reassuring the other cats and ends up pouncing on them to initiate play, I didn't think that was such a good idea either, so I scooped Thimble up on the way out to distract him from that particular idea.
The hailstorm stopped hailing ice soon afterwards, much to everyone's relief. It only brought down small twigs and leaves and stuff in my yard, but it brought down whole limbs and even trees in some other people's yards on my street and in my neighborhood.
The power only flickered once during the storm. The next morning around 9:30, during my breakfast at my parents' house, the power went out and stayed out till 6 pm that night. The storm ended in the middle of the night--by 9:30 the next morning it was blue skies and lovely. I still feel that the power had no business going out then when it had stayed on throughout the whole storm.
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