sleep-stalking?

Hi all,

my kitty Nero displayed some rather strange behavior last night. He was sitting on the couch with me & the other cat, and all of a sudden I noticed that he was all puffed up, about twice his normal size. He's a very large black cat, so twice his size = medium siberian tiger.

Anyhow, he fluffed himself up and was crouching (as if ready to attack) while staring blankly at the other couch -- but there nothing to see there. We checked if there was an animal outside that could have scared him, but nothing. And anyway, he wasn't staring at the windows or door, he was staring at the empty couch. He finally left his couch, in total slow motion. It looked almost as if he'd broken something, his movements were so soft. He jumped off the couch one paw at a time, and then he slooooooly walked to the other couch and started looking for ? I went up to him and talked to him and petted him, but he totally ignored me and just kept staring, and moving reaaaaaal slowl.

At that point, I noisily dropped a pot lid to scare him out of this, and that worked; he snapped out of it and started acting like normal again.

Question: What on earth was that? It was really freaky. It looked like he was sleepwalking, or having a nightmare? Has anyone ever heard of something like that? Links to cat-behavior sites appreciated; all I read is "cats sleep a lot" -- well, I knew that already!

Cheers

Are you the original owners of the couch? If not, I'd tried to find out its history if at all possible, because you never know what might have happened on it, or to whom, in the past!

I wonder if there weren't some nasty bugs in that couch and he knew they were there; so he was on the prowl! Who knows what goes through felines minds!!!

My RB cat Lambert used to see things that I could not and would puff up and sometimes hiss. It would always freak me out. Sometimes I really do wonder if cats can "see" things that we can't.