I have lived in the same apartment for eleven years. I didn’t even have a smart phone when I moved in, that’s how long ago it was. For family reasons I have had to move a couple of hours away to be closer to my parents.

On Wednesday I loaded the truck up with even more of my stuff and made the two hour drive and loaded some more of my stuff into the abandoned house. I didn’t have time to really find a place for most of the stuff so it just sat in the living room or the garage.

Friday was the big day. I loaded some stuff into the car. I tricked Jobu into his carrier. He didn’t mind at first. He thought he was going on a adventure. He sniffed at the exciting outside air, but then I put him in the car. In the car meant vet. He mreowed urgently. I climbed into the drivers seat and open up the carrier which confused and relaxed him. I petted him as we drove. About a half hour into the drive he realized we weren’t going to the vet. He also realized it was really boring. He went to sleep.

When I got to the house I put him and his liter box in the downstairs bathroom with some water. Unfortunately, I had to take care of some stuff and I had to leave him alone in the terrifying new house for a couple of hours. When I came back he was hiding behind some towels. I managed to coax him out with some treats. By the end of the night, he seemed to be settling in. Not wanting to leave him along that first night I slept on the couch near him. He bothered me all night long. He kept waking me up to reassure him and protect him. At one point during the night, I woke up with him climbing and sitting on my face.

On both Saturday and Sunday I brought up two more loads in the pickup.

I did experience a couple of horror movie moments in the early nights. Some of the lights weren’t working in the lower level. I thought it might be the breaker. The breaker box is in the farthest corner of the basement from the door. As I used my phone to light my way into the spider infested corner I thought if this was a horror movie this is when I would get it. It wasn’t a horror movie and I quickly had fixed the lights.

The second horror movie moment came the second night. I was still sleeping downstairs and Jobu was still waking me up a lot. Every once in a while, on the very edge of hearing, I swore I would hear someone talking in the living room upstairs. Every time I convinced myself that I was imagining it I would hear it again. When I got up to go to the bathroom( old man prostate) I decided to find out once and for all. I climbed up into the living room. There’s a nightlight plugged in up there that seems to be going bad. It just flickers. So I am walking up there in the flickering light at like 3 in the morning straining to hear talking. And then I heard it, a commercial for a vasectomy. For years my mom has had a radio on and tuned to a talk radio station to make people think someone was in the house. I had been standing near it earlier when my mom called me and I had turned it down but not off. So whenever a commercial would come on it would be just loud enough to barely hear.