Creepy Crawly Night Encounter

Last night, I was blissfully asleep. The cat, as usual, was sleeping somewhere near me on my bed.

I woke up around 3:30am to "pat, pat...pat...pat" sounds. The cat was moving a little bit, and the noise pattern reminded me of when she ............. hunts and plays with live spiders! EEK!!

I jumped out of bed and turned on the light. Sure enough, there was a large, ugly spider on my bed. He was of the same variety as all the others I've found in my house - a close relative, I'm sure. He was black, about an inch in diameter (if not a little bigger) and with a fairly large body.

"Pumpkin," I said, tapping the bed near the spider to bring him to her immediate attention, "Get him, here he is, get him. Come on, Pumpkin."

In response, my normally diligent kitty rolled over and yawned, meowing slightly as she looked sleepily up at me. She half-heartedly pawed at him a few times, but was really quite useless in my current dilemma.

I went to the kitchen and gathered a large wad of paper towels. The spider was still on my bed when I returned. After some strategizing, I decided not to squish him on my white duvet cover, so I used the paper towels to quickly flick him off the bed onto the floor.

Unfortunately, he disappeared briefly once I did this. He wasn't on the floor. Was he on my paper towel? Was he on ME??? I squeaked and promptly dropped my paper towels, hoping he wasn't already climbing on me. Half a second later, he crawled onto the carpet off of my sweater, which was on the floor near my bed - I guess I flicked him onto it.

The next events would never be considered 'humane' in terms of spider dispatchment. I used my paper towels and pounded the spider once onto the carpet. Poor little guy, he was still alive after the first hit. So I did it again. He was moving less after that, so I picked him up in my wad of paper towels, secured him in the middle of them all and squeezed the whole ball until I figured he was dead for good.

And just think, if my cat hadn't woken me up by lazily playing with the spider, he would probably (I hope) have climbed off my bed and gone somewhere else to hide and eat bugs. Instead, I woke up, got freaked out and subjected the spider to a terrible death.