In the middle of the night, leg cramps struck and I had to get up and walk them out.

Eventually the muscles stopped trying to turn themselves into pretzels, and after a good 45 minutes of hallway pacing, I could finally go back to bed.

As I returned to the bedroom, I noticed in the gloom a circle had appeared on my pillow. A perfectly formed dark circle. A perfectly formed dark fuzzy circle that was making snuffly snoring noises. Shmogg was all curled up - including upside-downy-head - in a perfect kitty ring, right in the center of my pillow. In the gloom, Shmogg on the pillow could have easily been mistaken for a Japanese flag on my bed.

I *had* to get my camera. But when I came back in, I must have disturbed his slumber because he lifted his head and opened an eye and gave me the withering "what on earth is that mad human up to at this hour of the night?" sort of look. He stood up, performed the most deliciously slow and hedonistic stretch that only a cat can, and re-settled himself. But not, sadly, in a circle this time.

Which means the fact that the batteries in my camera were just flat enough that the camera went through its whole boot cycle but couldn't manage to keep the camera 'alive' for the extra three milliseconds it would take for me to actually take the picture didn't annoy me half as much as if Shmogg had stayed tantalizingly in perfect pancake formation whilst I fussed about with the camera.

Of course, there was still the problem of a sleeping cat smack in the middle of my pillow, but he was clearly feeling generous last night - perhaps he knew about the pain my legs had given me. I feel so very, very privileged that he deigned to share about 1/16th of my - I mean his - pillow with me, and kitty fuzz in the sinuses is such a unique pleasure.

Either way, I still get a better night's sleep dangling precariously off a pillow with mammoth amounts of dander being directly injected into my ventilation cavities than I do if Shmogg decided not to sleep on my - I mean his - bed with me. And darn, doesn't he know it. B*st*rd C*t.

Copyright © Vicky Chapman
October 10, 2006