Thursday, January 31, 2008

A Heart Stopping Moment

We've been hearing reports of break-ins again lately. At least two of them occured while the people were sleeping in the house! So we are on high alert again. Damn, damn, damn!

If you will recall, we have a whole house burglar alarm system now. It includes motion detectors all around the inside of the house so that if somebody is able to bypass the other alarms, those will set it off. We arm it no matter how long we will be gone from the house, no matter the time of day.

Yesterday we had to run an errand downtown and set it up as usual. We had just made the 12 minute journey to town and parked the car when the cell phone rang. B answered it and it was the alarm calling us that somebody had broken in! We can have it call us if it gets set off. I pulled away from the curb and made it home in a record breaking 9 minutes! The alarm will call us 4 times, which it did, and then resets itself automatically. All the way home the phone kept ringing, adding to the tenseness. It evidently reset itself and then got set off again! We were sweating bullets.

We got home, jumped out of the car and checked for signs of break-in damage. Nothing. We disarmed the alarm, which was blaring from the loudspeakers we have hidden outdoors, and cautiously opened the front door.

Waiting for us just inside the door was one scared cat. Literally. We had inadvertantly locked one of the cats in the house when we left. She set the motion detectors off. Funny she didn't have a heart attack at her age. She was certainly glad to rush out of the house!

At least we now know that the system works. And also that the neigbors either can't hear it or don't care. Nobody called the police.

7 comments:

Brenda Maas said...

Well, at least you know it works; but if it doesn't scare the crooks off and no one calls the police what good is it? This is assuming that the police would come and/or do something about it if called. Guess you have to hope for them to be scared away from the noise.

My Way said...

Poor kit kit!!!

Islagringo said...

Brenda, yes it is more of a deterrent with the noise. The cops wouldn't come even if called.

MW: poor Kitty indeed! What about my nerves! Really though, she is 15 and I'm surprised the shock didn't out her over the edge! Her hair was all standing on end though!

Steve Cotton said...

I guess some things are not that much different from the States.

Nancy said...

The thing I think you knew was that you needed to do what you could for yourselves. You're doing everything you can, so don't think about it any more!

The most unusual and heartwarming Mexico break-in story came from my friend Jennifer in Mazatlan. Here's the link:
http://www.mexscape.net/Article73.html and there's a postscript, too, I will have to try to find the link.

Hang in there, next time it might be a mouse!

Nancy

Anonymous said...

Pobrecito gatito.

It figures no one would call the cops. In my hood folks figure that it's either a false alarm or they don't want to get involved. One neighbor's alarm sounded for the whole weekend because they were away. I almost went and broke into their house just to shut the dumb thing off...

Anonymous said...

I would be freaking out if i had to worry about the fort all the time it must grind on you.