Cats sleep a lot because sleep allows one to process all the heavy data we collect, crunch it when we ball up. Even the act of touching tail to nose closes a circuit of thought and being, the satellite transmitters/receivers of ears stay perked for messages from the other dimensions as real as the one you see me in. Eyes lie. Pressure, heat, movement, speed, texture and the rainbow of scents are more reliable indicators and communicators than pupils that by their very nature are in constant flux. This importance of touch is why I enjoy so much contact. Contact is calming. We stand in the aura of hormones, past consumed and emotions roil around like an oily whirlpool. Blood flow change can be clocked stage by stage and within this awareness of each other’s body’s comes the basic bonding that is the essence of life.

I’ve catted her now. Pinned, she can’t move.

She thought she would go outside but I know it is not safe for cat or beast out there. It is a whisker below -35 degrees and windy. The smoke blows straight with the horizon.

It’s for days like these that I let her share my abode. And where the hairless tom is now, well, I can only hope he has taken shelter somewhere warm. I wonder if someone else is feeding them in a second or third home. They must be in at least 3 homes for all the time they stay here.

The rumours must be true. The tree season *is* coming. I see car after car with a dead tree strapped to its roof just like the deer were strapped to the roof a few weeks ago. There is a gathering of boxes to investigate in the hall. I don’t smell any spruce or pine but PVC does suggest the possiblity of iconic treeness.

Sometimes I crave the open road. A distant look in my eye and chin cocked and to the side I watch the road and think, my Mror, I am sooo glad I’m not a dog. Far more power and dignity is with the cats at Christmas. Take for example the Scandanavian Yule Cat that steals poor children for lunch.

is that tree coming back this year I wonder? I hear through the webvine that its coming up somewhere. See the 12 cat-lovers Days of Christmas: (no meowing) but the numbers could use a bit of rejigging. 12 cats? 6 angels? I can really relate to the climbing the tree part though.

I’ll revisit this sleeping theme with a new set of angles. It’s dark today. Snow and more snow and all I want to do is sleep.

I want his undivided attention! I stand on the pillow beside him, mark his screen as mine. He doesn’t pass it over. I drool to the side of the screen, (which he hates), cross to and fro over his lap, stand in front of the screen, blocking his view. He just looks around me. I stretch arching my back. He sets me on the floor.

Let’s see what have I tried? Pawing his leg, his arm, wide-eyed looks, climbing onto the unused backhalf of the couch, patting his back, a touch of claws to scrape down his spine, walk across his keyboard (unceremoniously removed without his breaking eyes from the glass),

I’ll slowly weane the hairless away from his typing surface by insinuating (no sin there) my way between him and the clattering thing that keeps me awake and him so facinated. I wriggling and clambering onto one hip, using a bit of his thigh as a pillow, turned my head back in the most beguiling of way, rolled onto my side and in my most foetal-innocence slept, purring, and still he doesn’t look at me. As I sleep I stretch over more of his leg. He sets his keyboard off on the arm of his sofa, his back twisted, but he’s still typing. I get an absent minded irregular stroke across my back/side of face won’t cut it today. I get up, walk from leg to leg, 3 swift tail twitches to his eye. I am generous with my hairless tom but surely I can’t indulge this much inattention.

Still, it’s progress. His keyboard to the side, I turn three times, indicating I will settle. Once I am fully inside the lotus of his lap, I start to stretch across his arm and nuzzle it off, away from his side. How far can I push him? He’s not very flexible but he can contort a bit. Amusing. But this time, I’ll have to admit a sleep, not defeat. He must be doing something too important. Maybe he’s chatting. When I wake, maybe he’ll be done whatever he’s at.

The simians are clever with those thumbs. The hot box and the cold box hold food hot and cold. (Neither of those parts are secret.)

These food boxes also have very heavy doors. This is a design flaw. (an open secret to you too?)

I spent the morning scouting around the floor for iron hard scraps of bread for building secret weapon to attack fridge with. (This stash and plan, my friend, is the secret part.)

If wasps can wet down bark and make a paper nest, I should be able to salvage enough crumbs to make myself a catapult to at least hurl myself to the top of the cold box where the Alter of the Papyrus has been moved again. They do like to keep me on my toes, these simians.

Maybe I should think smaller first. Train to make the leap from the counter to the papyrus and use the crumbs to fashion a level to wedge open the cold box.

I stand on my back legs to the Altar of Papyrus, lift my chin to its sweet succulance that relieves me of hairballs with its spritzing essence on the singing ridge of my palate. I clack my teeth on its holy greens.

It sways and springs ever growing new shoots, tender and amber of Cattess Mror’s own eyes, each leaf the perfect iris by day, the cross section of its tube like her own foot pad, stem graceful and held up as pure alert happiness.

I may be flyweight class but my powers of gravity and psychological edge can pin a full grown man for hours.