Bonne Nuit, D'Artagnan

Every night before I go to bed, the cats and I have a ritual we do.

The Feline Five sleep in my room at night on five pillows and every night I hold each of them for a little while and scratch their ears and rub their tummies until they're good and sleepy.

D'Artagnan is the only one that sleeps beside my bed. We tried his pillow in the row at first but after three consecutive nights of him waking up on the rug beside my bed, he decided for me that he was not going to leave me. D'Artagnan is my own personal alarm clock. Every morning he hops into my bed and snuggles under my covers to wake me up. It beats an alarm clock hands down.

Well, last night I was reading before I went to bed when all of a sudden D'Artagnan jumps onto my bed and opens his mouth. Well, technically he was crying, but D'Artagnan so rarely cries that I sometimes wonder if he has working vocal chords because no sound ever comes out.

D'Artagnan is the only cat who knows commands in French, so I said to him, like I say whenever he cries, "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" or "What is the matter?"

In response, he lied on his back and stared at me with his big green eyes.

I know I don't really have a good photo of D'Artagnan up because he is really camera-shy. He is a sweetheart and a lovebug, but he does not understand the concept of posing like Locket and Cocoa do.

D'Artagnan has a face like a man. It narrows out into a very precise chin and that, coupled with his big ears, makes Cassie call him Batman when she's not calling him James Bond. When he lays on his back and stares up at me with his big eyes in an attempt to look all innocent, he just manages to look stupid. I love him anyway.

So D'Artagnan was laying on his back staring up at me. (He also has a horizontal strip of white across his tummy.) I scratched his tummy where he likes it and he closed his eyes and purred. His little front paws stretched in and out as he kneaded the air.

"Would you like to sleep up here tonight?" I asked him. "Just tonight." My mom says if I let him sleep on my bed routinely, he'll think it's his bed.

He purred louder and curled into an S.

"No," I said, laughing. "Not here. You're in the middle of my bed!"

I picked him up. He kneaded the shoulder of my shirt then allowed me to lay him down beside me. He closed his eyes again and fell asleep.

"Bonne nuit, D'Artagnan," I whispered to him before I picked up my book and started reading.

A moment later he'd put his head on my shoulder.

Should I mention D'Ar snores?

-L