Kitty Love


Kitty is my new best friend. He lurves me the way only cold kitties can. He has gotten over is personal bubble and thinks that the importance of Personal Space and Boundaries are a wildly over empathized and probably bad for your health. He’s cold and I’m warm and now he lurves me. Come August he’ll forget it ever happened.

I was trying to address an envelope the other day, hard enough as it is with my bad handwriting and every time I put pen to paper there was a kitty head in the way. Kitty has never handing out cheap head butts and there he was getting all sweet on my pen. Most of the time, he walks around with a piece of chalk in his mouth and he draws a little lines on the floor and dares me to cross them. He is not a touchy feely kitty.

He spends the summer lying on his back on the tiles in front of the fireplace hissing at anyone who comes too near him. He does not want to share the cool tiles with anyone, Dogger also discovered the wonder of the tiles but she learned to keep her distance early. Occasionally, Kitty will move a foot or so off the tiles and lay on his back in the middle of the living room floor – he looks really, really cute when he does this – all stretched out and sprawled all over, it makes him look like a little bear rug. One time, I tried to put my feet him when he was doing his little rug impersonation... I ended up picking bits of the rug out of my hair and teeth for days after that little experiment in masochism.

But, now see, its winter. Kitty doesn’t like winter. This is funny because as fat as he is and with the fur coat he wears, he should, in theory have enough body heat to warm a 600 square foot apartment. Okay, I kid, really probably only an efficiency – but still, Kitty’s got back and he could be a little more interested in sharing some of that body heat with those of us less well equipped for the cold, like me.

I think that kitty should volunteer to be worn as a scarf from the middle of November through the end of April. I think he could also be open to working as a bed warmer and as a foot stool. I think that during really cold snaps, he should step up and work as a hat. I see a lot of opportunities for him to help me, the keeper of his food and the cleaner of his box and the restrainer of the Dogger – make my winter more pleasent.

Its not that Kitty won’t chip in, he will. But, not when I ask him to, if I say “Hey, Kitty, I’m cold, why don’t you come up here and sit in my lap and watch TV with me and be a little furry hot water bottle?”, because a warm kitty is very much like a hot water bottle that cares about you. Kitty won’t even dignify this with a response. Two o’clock in the morning, I’m sound asleep, buried on blankets and about as warm as it is possible in my house, I am happy. I didn’t ask for Kitty, I didn’t want Kitty, I wasn’t even dreaming of Kitty so of course, Hello Kitty! In my mouth, crushing my wind pipe and holding me down. Now, I had Kitty. And Kitty did not want to move. If I’m watching TV and Kitty feels cold enough he will jump up on the chair and grace me with his regal self, if I as much as use the remote to change channels, he’s up and out of there. When he as trying to kill me in the middle of the night? He’s a champion bronc rider and nothing is unsetting him. He’s stuck to me like superglue and he wouldn’t get up. I finally had to rouse myself enough to wake myself up and sit up in bed to get the furry assassins' tail out of my throat and then he just looks at me like “What?! A couple of hours ago that was cute and now you want a TRO? Gawd you’re fickle! I think one us needs to go sleep on the couch”.

He was real surprised when I kicked him down the stairs.