The Night of the Dogs or The Mystery of the Sofa

Our new lounge, my sister calls it a 'Top Deck' like the chocolate

The most curious thing happened last night. We are not really even sure that it happened this way, but it is the best explanation we can come up with.
Last night we went to bed fairly late, we were up until about 1:30am reading and watching TV. When we went to bed Michael and I had the usual argument about putting the white kitty outside. She has proven herself utterly untrustworthy when left alone with our new sofa. so I won and she got put outside.

We slept like logs.  We slept straight through until 8:00am, I only woke once when the rained stopped for a few minutes. I heard nothing else all night and I am usually a light sleeper (to the point of painful, Michael would say).

Coming out into the lounge this morning, I noticed a piece of bread on the lounge. Then walking into the kitchen I saw the bin had been knocked over and ransacked.  There was garbage everywhere and the front door was also wide open. White kitty was inside,  calmly sleeping on my study chair. Big kitty was sleeping on the bed in the spare room. The lounge had paw prints (muddy ones) all over it and bits of food from the bin.

I immediately suspected the white kitty, who used to go through the bin all the time when we first got her. She is also addicted to the new lounge .

I looked more closely and found that there was black kitty hairs as well as white ones. There were signs of a scuffle, with prints all over the lounge, as if two animals had been playing chasey there. I was very cranky with both kitties and about to banish them, almost overlooking a very strange piece of evidence.

There were black straight thick short fur / hairs that did not belong to either cat.  The first outragous thought that popped into my head was that the two yappy dogs from next door had chased white kitty home and broken in with her (she is very proficient at this - she jumps up and down until she catches the lever handle with her paws) and trashed the garbage and terrorised the cats. Weird, yes I know. But when we walked to the creek yesterday we noticed that next door's dogs were down at their gate, where they never are, and they were barking like nuts.

Today we saw the owner of the dogs trapped on the other side of the flooded creek.  She must have been caught out when the flood started to come up yesterday, or maybe even earlier, as the creek has been up and down like a yoyo since Wednesday. The poor dogs are very likely to have been home alone without food for a couple of days.

We further confirmed our suspicions when the bag of cat food was found demolished outside the back door. The cats have been very uninterested in their food all week, as it is damp from the weather and this bag was torn to pieces.

The most amazing part is that neither of us heard anything at all. Either we were very tired or the rain was very heavy on the tin roof (likely) and covered up the noise of the fight.  Whatever it was will remain a mystery forever. Remarkably, every mark came off the Top Deck lounge as if it were plastic or tiles, not fabric - thanks Harvey Norman for recommending the stain resistant stuff.