Abbigale was sitting by my toes, where she usually sleeps. The house was quiet. The neighbors were quiet. My eyes were shut, and I was determined to go back to sleep... when I felt this odd movement in the blanket just above my knees...
I looked down in time to see Abbigale's tail disappearing under the edge of the extra blanket. Then I felt her purring as she crouched against my tummy, and pondered her next move. She started using one paw to gently probe for more open area around my tummy, arms, and neck. It really tickled! When nothing gave way to her demand for additional space, she started pushing harder-- with both paws-- on my kidneys. I pretended to be asleep.
(By the way, the intrepid explorer just found her way under my carpet again-- and has emerged triumphant, with the string wrapped around her neck and a front paw-- apparently, it tried to get away from the avid huntress by hiding under the throw rug in the living room. Silly string! Abbigale-the-Great is NOT afraid to hunt in the dark depths of the throw-rug jungle. She's been there before. ...and visitors wonder why my living room rug is always so bunched up at one end!)
When the paws-on-the-kidneys trick didn't work, she slowly oozed her way over my side and down into the well of blanket at my back. There, she turned around once or twice, rucking up my night shirt and generally tickling me with her whiskers. I gave up trying to go back to sleep, and started instead trying not to laugh. By 1:09 am, the call of the unexplored was heard, and more movement was felt, as our furry fusspot slowly excavated her way down to the crick between toes and bum. (I sleep with my legs bent, so there was a pretty good open space behind my knees-- which I thought would solve the problem, and we'd all go back to sleep.) Where she realized that the blanket didn't extend as far down the bed as she'd hoped. She backtracked, and then suddenly the pressure of her slow low creeping movement was gone. I couldn't take the suspense, so I opened my eyes, and peeked over my shoulder.
Abbigale was in the midst of the deep unknown-- still under this random extra blanket, but over in the part that didn't cover me-- the part that was sort of still folded up in a heap on the side of the bed. She got stuck in a fold, panicked, and at 1:15 am the relieved and somewhat static-y explorer shoved quickly over my legs and back outside the blanket, emerging at exactly the same point she'd originally entered. All good explorers carry a map of where they've been, you know. And as close as she must have come to exiting the blanket at several points in her research, I suspect that she never actually saw the nightlight, and thus never knew how close she'd been to working her way free on several occasions.
I think it was that little purrrt of utter relief and "did you miss me?" when she finally came out from under the blanket that did me in, since this whole "journey" had been over, around, and through me! I started laughing. Uncontrollably. Apparently, rather than taking offense the way she usually does when laughed at, Abbigale took this as reassurance that nothing that horrible had happened in her absence, and promptly curled up on my toes, and a corner of the slightly rearranged blanket, and started snoring.
I finally stopped laughing and went to sleep with a smile on my face around 1:30 am. I love my cat.
"Don't you people ever knock?"
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