The past few days, mechanics have been coming around to check all of the fire alarms in the neighborhood (which is made up of mostly apartment buildings) to make sure they were working. Today, somehow, they broke the fire alarm and set off a false alarm, and then just left. Me and my family thought the building was actually on fire, the fire station was called and I had to crawl under a bed and drag my half-feral foster fail into a cat carrier, who was frozen stiff and so scared she peed on me and herself. *I* was so scared I didn't even notice until my sister pointed it out.

On top of that, the alarm was so loud I could barely hear anything after finally getting out of range of the sound, and my mom screamed at me the entire time, freaking out and insisting that I didn't even have enough time to tie my shoes so I ended up having to carry my cat carrier to the car with my shoes untied. I couldn't even grab my cane on the way out the door. I took two seconds to grab my phone, thinking all my belongings were going to get destroyed, and she yelled at me.

I held back tears as me and my cat sat in the car trying to calm her down with bird sounds and immediately after we returned to our apartment my family left to go get ice cream and I'm just sitting here trying to shake the adrenaline off enough that I can cry myself out in solitude before they get back. I'm so shaken up.