In case you got to work on Monday and said, “hey, where was my Kitten Thunder fix this weekend?” I can honestly tell you I was sick. So sick. My nephew, with assorted family, was in town for a hockey tournament and every moment not spent with them was spent on the couch gathering energy to watch the next game. Uck. I didn’t even step into the same room as my computer for five days. So no blog. But! Plenty of blog fodder.
So the coughing began on Thursday night. It came on so fast and furious I thought I was having an allergic reaction to something I ate. When the initial fit was over, Oliver and I settled on the couch for a bit of Purr Therapy. Oliver is most excellent at deciding where a person hurts and pressing his rumbly little purring body against it. It’s good for the soul, if not the body.
Friday the cough progressed from scratchy throat up to full blown cough. I offered to sleep on the couch. Before you feel bad about me sleeping on said couch you must know two things: 1) I always slept on the couch when I was sick as a kid. Looking back, I don’t know why. But setting up Camp Blanket on the couch is a natural and comforting thing for me to do. And 2) we refer to this particular piece of furniture as “the evil couch” because it is sooooooo comfortable. Even if you aren’t remotely tired, this couch will suck the will to move – and your consciousness – right out of you.
We mused, before bedtime, about what Kitten Thunder would do. Of course, Oliver would stay with me on the couch because he’d want to do Purr Therapy. And he always, obnoxiously, sleeps in my arms with his head on my pillow. Obi, we figured, would continue to try to sleep through the night at the foot of the bed.
Folks, we couldn’t have been more wrong.
Evidently, The Girl is too annoying to sleep with when she has a persistent cough. I was totally abandoned. Oliver slept upstairs. The Boy slept upstairs (okay, don’t really blame him for that). Obi slept upstairs. The Girl? Downstairs. With only the dragon to keep her company; and don’t think for a minute that Zensai wouldn’t have abandoned me as well if he could get out of his tank.
No Purr Therapy. Does it not work on coughs? I suspect it has more to do with the inability to get a proper 18 hours of sleep on a coughing Girl. Or perhaps I was too gross for my fastidious grey kitten.
PLUS, in my absence, Obi decided he now sleeps at the top of the bed. Sideways. Pushing The Boy into the middle. You’re thinking that, perhaps, Obi should not get final say on where he sleeps. But he weighs 10 pounds when he awake and 800 pounds when he is asleep. And he’s VERY tolerant. No amount of foolishness will annoy him into moving.
I’ll let you decide how much you want to think about how inconvenient this was once my cough subsided. Oliver, I can tell you, is annoyed. We’re contemplating moving The Boy to the foot of the bed.
Anywho, on Monday my cough was all but gone, but all the hurricane force winds pushing out of my head made my neck sore and my skull throb. The Boy doesn’t think a person can get a concussion by coughing. After yesterday I’m not so sure. For one thing, my eyelids weren’t thick enough to block out the blinding lightness of the dim room I was laying in. I stood only up long enough to get a new round of beverage and, if at last three hours and fifty-nine minutes had passed, more pain pills.
On the bright side. I got some serious Purr Therapy.
Feel free to find my pain amusing…I will, some day when the trauma is dulled by time and more Comtrex. In the meantime, a picture of an early Thunder. This is in the old house when the condo was in a corner window and Obi was trying to fight/play his way in from the headboard a foot or so away. This is before they learned to share the condo.
"Welcome to the condo cafe. Can I offer you a knuckle sandwich?"
Kitten Thunder: Life lessons and cat tales 