Last night I was up every hour, in the 20s, from 4:25 am on to I think maybe 8:20, maybe 9, it was light by that point. I had that pain going on again, the extreme gas pain and the Gas-X may have been relieving it slightly but I couldn't tell from the moving and constant settling and the fucking ow.
This is the important part: I vaguely remember Abbie coming in at certain points and meowing at me. The "hey hey hey get up hey guess what hey I did something hey bottom of dish is visible hey hey" kind of meowing. I didn't know how to even move over to tell him to shoo, so I responded with something I thought he'd understand.
"A-woa-woa-woa-woa," I cried at him. It's the sound he makes when he's sick or at least burdened with a soon-to-be-ejected hairball, and he makes it when he's about to throw up (and I was really hoping at that point that I could throw up, because it may have meant some of the stuff inside me growing toxic would go away.) It's a real pitiful sound, something you don't expect to hear from a cat (a cat in heat sounds incredibly different; this sound really does mean "INCOMING") and one of those ones which, in me, triggers an instinctive reflex to A. grab the paper towels, B. grab the Murphy's if he's on the hardwood floors (or check to make sure what he's about to hit is either expendable or movable) and C. sit down and pat him and tell him it's ok afterwards.
My woa-woa-woa-ing seemed to have work. Abbie didn't trot off and drag the paper towels back into the room for me, but he did back off and I don't remember hearing him meow at me again.
He's a good boy. Got a bit of the empathy in him, I think. Probably thinks I'm catshit insane, which I probably am at this point.