If you have a cat it’s “Hurka hurka hurka”
There is nothing like the premonitory hurling noises of a pet to galvanize you into action.
Crashing sounds from the floor below accompanied by a cry of “Oh, no!” works pretty well too.
The horka-horka song! I had hardwood floors when I had my house and didn’t care too much, but now I rent and I am obsessed with their cheap pale gold carpet - luckily, it’s the type that doesn’t really show stains much. I hear the beginning of “Imma Gonna Puke” and I’m up like a shot.
I remove my hearing aid before retiring for the evening. Sounds do not get me flying out of bed. However, our oldest dog Loki wakes me up every night by licking my face somewhere between 3 and 6 a.m. It’s her thing. I take her out on a leash and she pees and poops. Every night.
Our dogs go to Defcon 2 about once a week. It’s just wildlife in the yard. Don’t need my hearing aids for that.
Cat puke noises certainly wake me up. But I usually just kick them off the bed and go back to sleep.
We have vinyl floors so cleaning up isn’t usually too much trouble.
Actually when I lived in Florida, the cats puked very often: I think they were swallowing insects and lizards that got in under the door all the time. Since we moved to the UK, doesn’t happen so much.
Well, this morning, it was two electrical transformers blowing up outside our bedroom window.
Fire alarm.
Ha! That’s exactly what I thought of when I read the thread title. Only not cat puke, dogs.
The other night something fell off the wall in another room and while it did wake me up, it didn’t make me shoot out of bed. I sort of laid there for a bit to listen for footsteps or floor creaks, and mentally prepared myself for fighting off an attacker. But I didn’t get out of bed.
But the “hut hut hurl” of a doggie puke has me racing down the hallway towards the plastic bags and Resolve.
The scream of a goat being attacked by a predator.
One time my husband and I ran out, me wearing a bathrobe but nothing else, and he wearing boots and nothing else. I think I was the one with the flashlight. Spooked a mountain lion into dropping the kid she was carrying off.
Yep. “Hork. Hork”
I will wake up and immediately triangulate the position of the about-to-be puke pile. If the answer is “on the bed” then I acquaint the puker with gravity. If the answer is “on the floor” I note general area to avoid while walking in the dark and go back to sleep. Unless the offender is Pixel, who tends to spread her offerings widely.
A “thump”.
I have random flail-y boys and a thump probably means they either fell out of bed, or fell off something they were trying to climb.
Cats wake me up.
I’m not being sexist, but the noisiest of our 6 cats are by far the 2 females, Ollie and Pee Pee.
Ollie (a tiny dwarf Highlander) chortles loudly every waking moment. She chortles when she’s zooming (i.e. all the time), when she’s happy, when she’s frustrated, and when she’s pissed. Ollie is a veritable chortle machine. Thankfully her chortling is not overly annoying, except at 3 AM.
Ollie also meows loudly when she gets herself into trouble and she gets herself into trouble a lot, especially at 3 AM. She’s fallen into the toilet bowl, gotten her claw stuck hanging from a lamp pull cord, opened and got trapped in the washing machine, and many other misdeeds. For a tiny cat, she packs a loud meow.
On the other hand, Pee Pee’s meows are downright brain-stabbing. She only meows when she’s hungry, but she’s hungry virtually every moment of her woken existence (even a minute after she eats a big bowl of Meow Mix). Did I mention Pee Pee is hungry in the middle of the night? She is. She doesn’t have a normal cat meow—it is loud, monotone, and of unearthly duration (I’ve clocked them at > 8 seconds each). Her meows crescendo especially loud every time she follows me into the kitchen, glaring intently and longingly into my eyes, forcibly batting my legs, pleading for a handout. When she realizes a handout is not forthcoming, her meows turn into the most pitiful moans you’ve ever heard. Oh, how can you let me starve, Dad, don’t you love me?
Shortly after we moved into our current house, I woke up to the sound of our garage door opener. I ran down stairs and found the garage door open about 2 feet. I hit the button in the garage and it closed. A few days later the same thing happened. A bit later I was driving up to the house and before I pressed the remote in my truck, the door started to open and stopped at 2 feet. I played around with my remote and figured it has some kind of short in it that would randomly trigger the garage door opener. I bought a new remote and haven’t had the problem since.
“Wait – I think I hear the kid/s!”
Originally posted by Sleel:
Babies seem to have a sixth sense about when parents are potentially creating a competitor for love, affection, and access to all that lovely-lovely lactation, and they react by screaming. Usually at exactly the point where either of you least wants to hear screaming. If there’s anything more boner-killing than seeing your wife leap off the end of your dick like it’s a cattle prod, and run into the bedroom to take care of the baby, I really don’t want to know about it.
One of the many reasons I don’t feel so bad about being ohne kinder.
Not auditory, but the smell of smoke will get me vertical PDQ.
Oh yes, that too! Just a few days ago we had a forest fire burning less than 6km (3.5 miles) away from the house. I live in a high risk area for forest fires and the slightest whiff of smoke will have me flying out of bed and out into the yard with a flashlight, bears and cougars be damned.
^^skunk for me. I sleep with the window open and if the skunk smell finds its way in, I’m up in a heartbeat to close the window.
Hearing the dog (long gone, now) scrabbling at the door to get out, to be shortly followed by her doing her business on the floor.
The sound? A loud THUNK.
The source? A falling branch. I say “branch” but they’re more like logs. We live in an area with a lot of oak trees. It’s especially scary during storms.