*hurk*

There's nothing quite like the sound of a cat getting ready to puke on your bed that will wake you out of a dead sleep at four in the morning. Really. I'm not talking about the slightly-groggy; just coming out of a dream waking up, either. I'm talking about the alert, coiled-spring sort of awake - like someone just injected pure adrenaline into your heart.

By now you can tell where this is going.

Early this morning - ~4:30am - one of our cats starts with the "huck" sounds at the foot of our bed. Within seconds, both my wife and I were awake and scrambling. I rushed out to grab the cat (hoping to hold him over something easily wiped down) while my wife ran into the bathroom to grab the (un)petroleum jelly to dose the cat. It's a simple procedure to treat hairballs, really - give the cat the petroleum jelly; cat will ingest it; jelly lubricates whatever cat is trying to hork up; cat naturally passes it instead of horking it onto your duvet.

Who says cats are boring?