Sometimes I wake up from an otherwise perfectly sound sleep with the oddest ideas. Take this morning, for example. I lay there in the dark at just before 3 a.m. wondering just why I had awoken. I was just about to drift off back into blissful slumber, when I heard it.

SCHLUP SCHLUP SCHLUP SCHLUP SCHLUP SCHLUP...

My orange tabby, Marari, was rather noisily taking an early morning bath right next to my head. I don't know what trouble he got himself into in the middle of the night that he felt required some extreme cleaning, but he was really going at it.

SCHLUP SCHLUP SCHLUP SCHLUP SCHLUP SCHLEP SCHLUP lick lick lick SCHLUP...

At first, still halfway asleep, I thought the noise presaged the wet, hairy, unwelcome arrival of a hairball upon the clean sheets I had just put on the bed the night before. My two cats are quite healthy, but they seem to have a terrible allergic reaction when it comes to two things: 1. clean bedding, and 2. clean laundry. I don't know what it is about clean laundry that seems to necessitate an immediate purge of the feline stomach of unwanted hair they have ingested while bathing, but it has happened enough times to make me suspicious.

Yes, I'm afraid that more than once, I have been awakened from a sound sleep by the awful HURRRRP HURRRRRP that signals another hairy, steaming present is about to be bestowed upon the world.

That isn't the kind of thought one can have and stay half asleep, so of course I instantly sat up in bed and turned the light on.