Before going to bed, my wife and I watch old noir films from Turner Classic Movies hosted by Eddie Muller who brings us the scariest, nastiest movies from the genre. Last night we were watching a movie about a woman who sees a murder but can’t get the cops to believe her.

During the screaming part of the movie, my wife says, something is fiddling with the front door. We put the movie on pause and looked outside, and there’s nothing there.

“Probably the wind or one of the killers who escaped from the slammer earlier tonight,” I say.

“Right,” she says, and we go back to the movie. Then the tapping starts up again. She glances down the hall and sees a kitty head peering in the windows in the top half of the front door.  He must be hanging on by his claws.

We go to the porch again and see that it’s the black and white kitty that’s adopted us and he is very aggrieved that his food bowl is empty.

Frankly, we think tapping on our door whenever he’s hungry is an example of a cat getting too pushy. But, we feed him anyway. Otherwise, we won’t be able to hear the movie. We know giving in to his demands will serve as a reward, so he’ll probably do it again on our next dark and stormy night.

If you have cats, you know what I’m talking about.

—Malcolm