Of Cats and Sleeping

I woke up at about 2:30 AM last night and couldn't get back to sleep. First I tried taking my contacts out, because I had foolishly gone to bed with them in. There was a film covering them so it took more effort than it should have to get them out.

When I still couldn't sleep, I hopped on the computer in the 'office'. Immediately, Moxy (the 18 pound cat) jumped into my lap for a snuggle and soon after Simba (the 14 pound cat) came to say hello, and after seeing that Moxy had already taken over my lap, he went on his way.

Before we had the dog, both when I was single and when Esposo was just Boyfriendo, Moxy and Simba slept on the bed. Moxy liked to sleep between my legs, which made flipping over more challenging. If it got particularly cold, he tapped my head in a request to come under the covers and sleep.

The dog has since taken up residence on the floor of the bedroom, and both cats tend to view it as her domain. The dog sleeps like the dead and has frequently missed Esposo coming in at night, so the cats should ease up a bit, but they're cats and dumb like that.

I headed back to bed about 3:30, carrying the cat with me, intent on snuggling in bed with his warm furry body. He was, of course, less than thrilled about being dragged into the lion's den, even though the lion was comatose. I set him up next to me, his paws on my arm and body tucked in close to mine, and forcefully held him there. He tried to pull away a little - you know how cats look when you've got them held down and they're trying to get away? The skin on their head gets pulled back a bit and their eyes get really big? Yeah, he looked like that. I could feel the tension in his body screaming that as soon as I let go, he was gone.

So I pulled the sheet over his head.

Within a few minutes he realized that we have a mattress pad heater, which is essentially a bed-sized heating pad that neither one of us can turn up past level one and even that makes us toss aside the covers in the night, and that I was warm, and the dog wasn't going to eat him. He relaxed, he purred a little...

And then my arm was going numb and I started regretting this whole snuggle with the cat plan.