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The war of the blankets
Dec. 29th, 2009 10:19 pmEvery year, it happens.
The wind howls. A chill enters the air, the room, the walls. Night falls. Heat streams from the room.
And we have a struggle over the blankets.
Now any reasonable observer would agree that since the cats have fur, and I don't, and since I actually buy cat food and litter, and they don't, and since one of the two is friendly only on her own deranged schedule (and when friendly, somewhat insistently and painfully so – although, to be fair, from her perspective I probably do not have anything on earth more pleasurable or important to do than to scratch her chin, aside from pouring out cat food), I should, by any standards, get the blankets.
Cats, of course, are not reasonable observers. Which means that the following happens on every cold night:
The Little One crawls under the blankets to be next to me.
The Little One decides that he needs more space under the blankets, and starts shoving me.
The Little One decides that really, the problem is that is he on the wrong side of me, and scrambles over me to reach the other side – and then starts shoving me.
Just before the Little One is tossed unceremoniously off the bed or into a wall, he wraps himself around one of my arms, hugging it tightly, his entire focus bent on Being Cute.
Meanwhile, the Grey One – who, as I may have noted, is the considerably more intelligent of the two – has dug her little claws into either my lovely soft microfiber throw or my equally lovely soft plush/fake fur blanket, and dragged them either to one corner of the bed to make a little kitty nest or even more frequently, dragged one or both to the floor, hiding beneath it, a strategy that would doubtless work better if she would remember to hide her tail as well, which she never does. Removal of said blanket inevitably results in what might seem like a a magical or ghostly turning on of the bathroom faucets, if not for the slight fact that yes, we CAN SEE YOUR GREY FUR running from the bathroom, and we can also see you watching the running water in intense concentration.
(Most of the time, when she does this, it's apparently just so she can watch the water run. I think she's trying to figure out where it comes from. She never drinks it or plays with it, but I figure that since she's figured out how to turn the faucets on by watching us, she figures she can figure out where the water comes from by watching it. I used the word "figure" far too often in that sentence.)
On occasion – just on occasion – we vary this by having both cats nestling smugly – no, not snugly, smugly - on top of both blankets, wrapped in each other's paws, smack dab in the center of the bed, refusing to move even when I attempt to move my legs directly under them since that is the most comfortable place for ME. Or we have both cats crawling underneath the covers to sleep with me, a procedure that is far more complicated than that sentence would suggest.
I love winter – or at least the hint of it that we have here. (Hey, we did get actual frost and icicles last year. Who knows what this winter might bring?) I love the cats. But you'll excuse me while I go and try to save my own blankets for the night.
The wind howls. A chill enters the air, the room, the walls. Night falls. Heat streams from the room.
And we have a struggle over the blankets.
Now any reasonable observer would agree that since the cats have fur, and I don't, and since I actually buy cat food and litter, and they don't, and since one of the two is friendly only on her own deranged schedule (and when friendly, somewhat insistently and painfully so – although, to be fair, from her perspective I probably do not have anything on earth more pleasurable or important to do than to scratch her chin, aside from pouring out cat food), I should, by any standards, get the blankets.
Cats, of course, are not reasonable observers. Which means that the following happens on every cold night:
The Little One crawls under the blankets to be next to me.
The Little One decides that he needs more space under the blankets, and starts shoving me.
The Little One decides that really, the problem is that is he on the wrong side of me, and scrambles over me to reach the other side – and then starts shoving me.
Just before the Little One is tossed unceremoniously off the bed or into a wall, he wraps himself around one of my arms, hugging it tightly, his entire focus bent on Being Cute.
Meanwhile, the Grey One – who, as I may have noted, is the considerably more intelligent of the two – has dug her little claws into either my lovely soft microfiber throw or my equally lovely soft plush/fake fur blanket, and dragged them either to one corner of the bed to make a little kitty nest or even more frequently, dragged one or both to the floor, hiding beneath it, a strategy that would doubtless work better if she would remember to hide her tail as well, which she never does. Removal of said blanket inevitably results in what might seem like a a magical or ghostly turning on of the bathroom faucets, if not for the slight fact that yes, we CAN SEE YOUR GREY FUR running from the bathroom, and we can also see you watching the running water in intense concentration.
(Most of the time, when she does this, it's apparently just so she can watch the water run. I think she's trying to figure out where it comes from. She never drinks it or plays with it, but I figure that since she's figured out how to turn the faucets on by watching us, she figures she can figure out where the water comes from by watching it. I used the word "figure" far too often in that sentence.)
On occasion – just on occasion – we vary this by having both cats nestling smugly – no, not snugly, smugly - on top of both blankets, wrapped in each other's paws, smack dab in the center of the bed, refusing to move even when I attempt to move my legs directly under them since that is the most comfortable place for ME. Or we have both cats crawling underneath the covers to sleep with me, a procedure that is far more complicated than that sentence would suggest.
I love winter – or at least the hint of it that we have here. (Hey, we did get actual frost and icicles last year. Who knows what this winter might bring?) I love the cats. But you'll excuse me while I go and try to save my own blankets for the night.
