At some point I thought I felt Nightstar moving around on the bed. She stepped up and sat down on my hip in Sphinx pose. I was amazed because she never does that; she usually lies down right next to my pillow, under the covers with me, or at the other end of the bed entirely. I actually raised my head for a quick peek to make sure it was her, because Jennifur sometimes sleeps on top of me, but always on my stomach…but she was surely too dark to be Jennifur.

Well, we stayed like that for awhile. Every five minutes or so, I felt the urge to shift around a little, but resisted because I was sure she’d get off if I did…she seemed a bit precarious up there. Finally I couldn’t help myself and rearranged a bit. Amazingly, she stayed on, even rearranging herself a bit. I eventually started falling asleep and that’s when the fun really began.

Suddenly my head began filling with thoughts. I actually saw a page begin to fill up with writing about cats — a whole collection of things I had been planning to write for ages. Cat love; cat promises; cat prayers! And, if you’ve been following this blog for more than 30 seconds or so, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been able to write anything for months. Well, here I am at 5:30 in the morning writing now, and I’m seeing words fill up on the page just like it did a little while ago in bed. But wait, there’s more.

I had shifted a few more times and Nightstar stayed right where she was. Suddenly I had a flash…this didn’t really seem like the Nightstar I knew. I remembered Yang was in the room and I know he can sleep through any amount of movement. Steathily I found the tail and raised it up and looked. Even in almost pitch dark, I could see it was definitely a black tail and not a white one!

And yet the fur didn’t feel like Nightstar somehow. So I started counting off cats in my head. Not Yang, not Jennifur. We just weighed Nightstar at 14 pounds and this cat seems awfully light…so it can’t be Agile either. The door was closed, and the only other cat in the room was Panther…but he hasn’t even slept on our bed since 2001, and never on either of us.

Just about then, she (or whoever) jumped off. I couldn’t stand the suspense, so I sat up, put on my glasses, and found my flashlight. I looked on the bed and there was Agile where I had seen him last…with Nightstar sleeping right beside him. Jenni was on her shelf, and since Yang was nowhere on the bed, that meant he was in a box in the closet.

Which left Panther, who was eating from a bowl on the floor after jumping off the bed.

No pun intended (this time, anyway), but this floored me. Clearly Panther — who I’ve never been able to “hear” in all the time he’s lived with us — had sent me all this information for a reason, even sitting on me to make sure I got the message. So 5:30 in the morning or not (and I’m definitely not a morning person), I figured if it was this important to Panther, it was important enough for me to get up and get back to writing.

So here I am again, folks. And all hail Panther.