The cat opened her eyes slowly as the rays of the morning sun reached her face. She sat up in her soft, plushy bed and yawned quietly, opening her mouth for a few seconds. Then she closed her mouth, licked her upper lip and stepped out of her bed. She walked over to her food dish, which was a light pink color and had the name "Missie" written on it. The cat's name was, indeed, Missie. She had a mostly white body, with light blue eyes, a pink nose, a couple gray patches of fur on her head and back, and a long, gray tail with a white tip on it.

Missie looked in her food dish, but to her disappointment, it was completely empty. And right on cue, she felt her stomach growling. She looked around for someone to feed her, seeing no one at first, but then she heard some audible snoring. She looked upward to see the side of a bed above her, and figured that whoever was in the bed was the one snoring. She stood up on her hind paws, put her front paws on the bed to keep her balance, and took a look at who was occupying it. She saw Lumpy, her owner, who was still sleeping.

"Mow?" Missie meowed, hoping to get Lumpy's attention. "Meow?"

Lumpy fidgeted slightly in his sleep, but otherwise, there was no response. Missie jumped up onto the bed, walked up onto Lumpy's upper body and tried again. This time, she meowed a little louder than before.

"Meooooow!"

To the feline's slight dismay, Lumpy continued to stir in his sleep, without even opening his eyes. Missie walked right up to Lumpy's face and looked at him for a few seconds. She reached her neck up to his face and sniffed the end of his nose. It didn't smell like anything unusual. She licked it a couple of times, finally causing him to react, albeit without waking up.

Lumpy raised his hand up to his nostrils and rubbed them a few times, then went back to sleep. Missie looked on in curiosity, and tilted her neck back to its normal position. As she tried to think of a way to wake him up, she looked down at the floor, where several of her favorite cat toys lay. Some of them included a rubber mouse, a bell ball, and a feather toy - consisting of nothing more than a long stick with several bright pink, fluffy feathers on one end.

Missie got an idea. Maybe if she used her feather toy to tickle Lumpy's nose, she'd make him sneeze and wake up. She jumped off of the bed, approached the stick, and picked it up with her teeth. She then stood back on her hind legs, putting her front paws on the bed again as she looked at Lumpy. Holding the stick in her mouth, she moved the feathered part right in front of Lumpy's nose and began to wiggle it around.

Lumpy whimpered slightly as the feathers stroked his nose, tickling it. His snout twitched, and his nostrils flared up in irritation. A sneeze began to build deep inside his nose, and his breath quickly hitched.

"Ah... Aaaaaah..."

In response to hearing his inhales, Missie continued to tickle Lumpy's nose. She softly waved the stick back and forth, letting the feathers tickle his nostrils and make them flare up even more. She had never acknowledged how sensitive her owner's nose was, or how easy it was to get him to sneeze. So she continued to tickle his nose, moving the stick around so that it wiggled the feathers right on his nose.

"Aaaaaaaaahhhhh... AaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAHH..." Lumpy continued to inhale as he got closer to the release. His nostrils were flaring up uncontrollably as the feathers tickled them, and his snout continued to quiver. A couple of seconds later, he gave a final inhale. "AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH...!"

The last gasp startled Missie, who immediately became convinced that Lumpy couldn't handle it anymore. She pulled the stick away from Lumpy's nose, spat the toy out onto the floor, and hid her paws and head away from Lumpy's view. She ducked onto the floor, covering her ears with her paws. And the next thing she knew, it happened.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Lumpy released a huge, loud and powerful sneeze as he shot his neck forwards. A good amount of saliva came spraying out of his mouth and nose with his sneeze. A few seconds later, he recovered, opened his eyes and sat up in his bed. He sniffled and rubbed his nose on his forefinger, groaning.

"Ugh... Wow, where did that come from?" he asked himself as he continued to rub his nose.

Missie was terrified from how the sneeze sounded at first, but her disposition quickly went back to normal after it had ended. She stood back up and looked up at Lumpy, smiling politely at him.

"Meow," she went, as if blessing him.

"Thank you," Lumpy said, still rubbing his nose and trying to make it seem like he could understand her, although he couldn't. He sniffled again. "My gosh, that was a pretty crazy sneeze. Something must have tickled my nose."

Missie then walked over to her food dish, then hit it a couple of times with her paw, moving the bowl slightly closer to Lumpy. She meowed again.

"Meow."

"All right, all right," Lumpy said, getting up from his bed and removing his finger from his nose. "I'll get you your breakfast, don't worry."

He walked over to Missie's food dish and picked it up with one hand. He started to leave the room, but suddenly, the feather toy that Missie had tickled his nose with caught his eye. He looked suspicious for a few seconds as a thought came to him. Could Missie herself have used her feather toy to tickle his nose and make him sneeze?

"Nah," he said to himself as he walked out of his bedroom, heading to the kitchen with Missie following him.