Heheh, a few weeks ago for me it was thunder from a lightning strike that sounded like it came from within the house. I still haven’t seen what tree around here was hit, but it was close.
Once I had set my alarm for 2AM when I meant it to be set for 2PM. I was down the hall fooling around on the computer when I suddenly heard MARIACHI MUSIC BLARING FROM THE BEDROOM. This was the sound of my alarm, so I ran down the hallway to shut it off. When I reached the door I saw my wife, who had apparently sprung out of bed and was now in a crouching attack position. As soon as she could identify what the hell was making that noise, she was going to kill it.
I’m not extremely proud to say I was immediately reduced to a pile of laughter and tears on the floor. I recovered swiftly enough to save the life of my alarm clock, though.
This was back when I was a scout master at summer camp. I dreaded hearing the sound of a zipper on a tent being opened in the middle of the night. Hoping for someone just going to the bathroom, it was far too often a scout vomiting all over the tent, and the tentmate escaping the mess.
That was the first one that came to my mind, as a lifelong cat servant. Somekitty looks like s/he is in need of tummy rubs…
Loud splashes from a room known to be unoccupied are quite effective too. (That time, a bathroom ceiling gave way “thanks” to a leak in the plumbing in the apartment above mine.)
Dog noises. Not the usual kind, retching, growling, yelping, or the sound of actual puking in action. There was a fisher cat in the area for a while and they have a distinctive scream. Some say fishers don’t scream like that and it must be a fox. However, foxes have been in the neighborhood all along and the fisher was only seen for about a year. I digress… if it’s not the dogs it will be a noise outside, almost always wildlife if teenagers can be included in that category.
Yup–running water when there should be no water running gets my attention tout suite. In my house and on job sites. I walked into a house we had finished a month prior but had not been occupied and heard running water… Turns out the plumber thought the drain on a clear icemaker was optional (they operate like a hotel icemaker). Pro tip–the ice is always melting. Luckily the room below was unfinished, but the kitchen floor was ruined.
Cats spewing is one. The other for me is the cries of a Bush Stone Curlew…despite having lived here for over 3 years now, the sound rouses me up from a deep sleep, and whilst I don’t fly out of bed, it’s enough to disconcert the rest of my sleep-time.
The sound of water spilling/dripping/spraying and/or anything that even remotely sounds like water landing on carpet. I have two aquariums so unexpected noises that involve water tend to get my attention pretty quickly.
A few months ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of water splashing, turns out a snail was crawling across a nozzle and creating a ‘thumb over the garden hose’ effect.
We had a bolt so close yesterday it actually rattled a cabinet door open.
.
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A voice outside my bedroom window, “Police. Open the front door!”
It seems the nice probation officer just wanted to give my neighbor’s adult son’s girlfriend her Xmas gift & she hadn’t come into the office to pick it up so he decided to deliver it to her at 12:30 in the morning. Wasn’t that sweet of him?
The sound that got me out of bed fastest was a snarling German shepherd and a bunch of screaming girls just outside my window. Turns out the girls were on my side of the fence, and their puppy was in my neighbor’s back yard trying to avoid the neighbor’s German shepherd.
Screaming children. Some years ago, while living in an apartment, I woke up at 530 am bolting out the door buck naked followed by my wife and niece (who was living with us at the time) to rescue a small girl who lived next door. She had apparently woken up and gone on adventure outside. When the door autolocked behind her, she panicked and started screaming and I just reacted before I actually woke up. Could have been very bad, all things considered.
My wife screaming at the top of her lungs. I work nights and sleep during the day and she wouldn’t bother me unless something was seriously wrong.
I could sleep in the middle of a busy highway but that loud shrill of hers jolts me up and at them every time! Even if she’s in the rec room 2 stories down I can hear that.
The sound of hooves where hooves should not be walking will get this (usually very sound-sleeping) horse owner out of bed and moving fast. My current property is fully fenced, so not nearly the potential horror show as before when it didn’t take much for them to find the road, but at this point it’s ingrained. I’m up and looking for a flashlight before I’m really even awake.
I think I’ve become inured to cat-yak noise. It just creates a memo in my mind to step carefully when I get up in the morning.
My immediate response to hearing “horka-horka” is to verify that the cat is not on the bed, and take appropriate action if he is. If the cat is not on the bed, I just make a mental note to watch where I walk in the morning until I find the mess to clean it up.
This morning I didn’t find it until I went to put on the shorts I had left by the side of the bed.
My cat has also decided that most mornings I need to be woken up at 6-6:30 am. He does this by walking around my head, meowing loudly, and pawing at me with his claws out. It’s a miracle I haven’t thrown him out the bedroom window yet.
