Things that go bump.

There are times when I envy my cat's life, consisting as it does of sleeping, eating, sleeping, and napping. And snacking. She wakes up long enough to eat and then to go find a new place to sleep, often following the sunlight around the house as it moves during the day. But she excels at sleeping at night: when she jumps up onto the bed after lights-out, she settles between or onto my ankles (she prefers sleeping on them for some reason), and zonks out. And once she goes to sleep at night, she's dead to the world for at least ten hours, arising with a dainty ka-thummp! onto the floor immediately above my office to announce her readiness for breakfast.

So it was a real surprise the other night, when she woke me up at 4 a.m. Something had set her off - she was as agitated as she'd been during the earthquake in December or the tornado in September: Unhappy meowing, frantic pacing back and forth, repeated jumping from the bed to the floor and back, unwilling to be soothed or to be distracted by food. Figuring that there had to have been something to get her going like that, I got up and wandered around the house, trying to find what might have been the problem. The furnace wasn't about to explode, there was no car halfway into the living room, no one had broken in to threaten Her Majesty's food supply, and the weather was peaceful. No telling. I gave up and went back to bed. Eventually, she did too, but not especially happily.

It was back to normal last night, though. I awoke around 1 to find my bed swaying: medium sway, small sway, nothing. No noise, just the swaying. Perhaps what you'd expect if someone bumped into the bed, or someone heavier than the cat jumped onto it. Except there's not supposed to be anyone else in the house to hit the bed, and the cat was sprawled unmoving across my ankles, delicately snoring, so it wasn't her. Since she was still asleep, I clearly hadn't been moving my legs around enough to shake the bed, while my arms were in the same position they'd been in when I fell asleep. Hmm. Another check of the house, not that I knew what I'd find that would have made the bed sway that wouldn't continue to cause its presence to be known. Again, nothing, so I returned to bed. And a check this morning indicates there wasn't an earthquake or nearby explosion. Oh, well. I blame poltergeists.