Send them Back

I am exhausted and my back is killing me. I was tired yesterday, so I went to bed early, listening to the patter of rain on the skylight. MMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Peaceful.



And them, WHUMP! Delivered unto me by one The Man is a K-Hole dumped unceremoniously on the bed. I shift a little, I feel Kirby settle into me, and I drift off to sleep.



Slowly, gradually, I become aware that all is not right. Yarn Bandit is also on the bed. And then I realize: THUNDERSTORM. I usually sleep through these on account of the hearing impairment. The Boys, however, hate HATE HATE thunderstorms. It turns out that Kirby was awakened by the thunder and tried to hide from it by scrabbling around under the bed, which woke up The Man. We know from experience that Kirby is not going to settle down during a storm unless he can seek refuge in Dirtbunny’s protection, so on the bed he went, and he settled down.
Tiki, I think, is worse about storms. He does not settle down. He climbed up on the bed and slowly, inch by inch, wormed his way between Kirby and Bunny. He did not lie down and curl up. He did not relax. He could not get close enough. I put him under the covers (but not the face! He doesn’t like the face under the covers.) and I put my arms around him, but he would not settle down. He just sat there and shook and trembled and drooled a little (Yum! That’s what you want dribbling on you when you are trying to sleep.) and kept trying to get closer to me by climbing on me by poking his claws and his little forearms into my flesh (arms, boobs, whatever happened to be there). Um, ouch. Tiki has no respect for boobs. Testicles, either, reports The Man.
After about three hours of this, the worst of the thunder passed over us and Tiki went back to his dog bed and went to sleep. Kirby, however, proceeded to hog the bed. I woke up a half dozen times with my body contorted uncomfortably around his lump of a body. And now my back is killing me.