The cat's meow and other things that go bump in the night

I'm tired, terribly, terribly tired. 
I was awakened throughout the night by our cat, which has left me as tired as a mother with a newborn.
Mark has been out of town for work for a week and Freyja was spending the night with my mother, Maxwell was at at a friend's house, so I invited a friend to stay with me, because I felt weird about being alone.  I don't usually, but last night I did. 
Our house is large, old and creaky and it has an odd configuration. 
I am allergic to cats and so is Maxwell, so I always close the door leading upstairs to the bedrooms. 
My friend left the door open- I had gone to bed first. 
She is a cat person, so she imagined that the cat was welcome upstairs.  The cat thought this was some kind of sign, that she should take all of her desire to have been upstairs for the past seven years and act them out in one night.
First she crawled onto my stomach and sat, like a fifteen pound rock, purring wildly and looking at me, until I opened my eyes.
Totally unaccustomed to having the cat in my bedroom I couldn't quite place what was going on, and sort of batted her away, which caused her to start doing that kneading thing that cats do on my HEAD. 
Fully awake at that point, I put the cat into Freyja's room with my friend, thinking, surely that is what she had in mind, when she left the door open, besides, I was feeling too tired to catch the cat and take her all the way downstairs.
A few hours later the cat was back. 
It seems that she was crying and clawing at my door, so my friend let her in.  The went on until around 6:00am when I finally  was conscious enough to take the cat all the way down.
The  phone rang at 8:00 and the day began.