Cat Physics

She looks serene. Trust me, she was only sitting next to me for pettings

I have two cats. The above pictured is Calypso, whom I've had since she was an itty-bitty hissing, spitting half-feral kitten orphaned under my brother's trailer. She socialized pretty quickly but it became abundantly clear early on that she was my cat. She will randomly strike out at people (my mom will tell you that she is 100% of those people) and hiss and generally be unpleasant to them. But me? She will cuddle  and purr and let me hold her like a stuffed animal at night.

Calypso has been one of the stable things in my life. If people tell you animals don't have complex feelings like empathy, I ask them to look at the night that she tucked her favorite toy in bed next to my arm the first night I cried myself to sleep over finances. Of the times that I've been sick and she's lain with me through my medicine- and fever-induced comas. Shit, sometimes I  can even get her to knead my abdomen when I have cramps. She is the best friend a crazy cat lady could ever want.

But she is an insufferable bed hog. And she snores.

Anyone with cats can attest to the fact that all cats, everywhere, are bed hogs. I don't care if you're an 80lb anorexic in a king bed-- you will wake up with a bare 6 inches on the edge to your name. If you're lucky, you have a blanket hog like my other cat Eden, who gets underneath and burritos up so that I'm grasping for blanket and shivering to death. There's that something about cats, how they absolutely defy the laws of physics and nature and expand their bodies to take up an entire bed. Calypso particularly loves to get me into awkward positions too, where I have no room to move to make myself comfortable. Curling up between my legs, or making me look like some even more tormented version of the Hanged Man, with one leg crossed.

It's even more awesome when they gang up on me. Twice the cat = 2x less room. That's Eden on the left, by the way.