Honest question. What's it like being in an earthquake?

Also, how do cats usually react to them?

When I was in second grade I was listening to music while lying with my feet up on the wall and daydreaming about being Wonder Woman. Then I made the wall snap up and down with my feet, just once, and realized I am in fact a superhero. Taking off the headphones was a big disappointment when the teacher announced there had been an earthquake.

For years I lived on top of the very seismically active area surrounding a geothermal plant in the bay area. There were vibrations at least once a week that were roughly akin to an overloaded dump truck passing on your street (but we lived in the woods, half a miles from the road). Sometimes glasses would rattle too. One time I was chillaxing in the tub when the water suddenly started sloshing from side to side for about a minute.

When I lived in a brick Victorian in SF, we had a couple unnerving quakes. One time there was a sharp jolt that had me racing out of bed and sitting in the hall for 30 minutes with heart pounding while listening to everything inside loudly jump up and down on shelves. When I was certain the aftershocks were over, I found a few things on the ground but nothing broken.

Another time I was standing near my wooden loft when the damn thing started RIPPLING and everything else including the walls and window swayed back and forth. While it's nauseating to see all that dramatic motion, it actually was a sign that the I-beam retrofitting was working exactly as advertised. Swaying is good. The structure moves as a unit. Jolting is bad. That's how stuff winds up being wrenched apart.

A family member's chimney was destroyed by the notorious 1989 Loma Prieta quake. Things could have been a lot worse, so we considered it a blessing. But it shows how vulnerable the brick structures are. The rest of that house was wood and plaster; even at a century old, it withstood Loma Prieta just fine though the plaster had scars after.

2/

My cats were not thrilled about living on top of the geothermal activity. They'd usually hide under the bed for a while. Btw, cats and some other animals can pickup the waves a few seconds before human do. If you're in earthquake country when a cat suddenly streaks toward a hiding place, get out of the structure or at least go into a hallway.

Fun fact about growing up in earthquake country: in first grade we had a big citywide earthquake emergency drill event. All of us kids got to go to the hospital and get fake bandages and fake blood, so the emergency workers could practice triaging the wounded. Some lucky kids even got crutches, wheelchairs, or gurnies. It was like the best ever Halloween to us, but I suspect we were meant to takeaway a different lesson. Lol.