Sunday mornings are hard to sleep through around here under normal circumstances because that's when my father starts watching on Tivo the various Loudmouthed Idiots Shouting shows that run even earlier in the day, and which he watches on the apparent assumption that some actual bit of news may emerge from them. Meet The Press is tolerable, but when he gets to The McLaughlin Group sleep usually turns into holding the pillow and keeping my eyes closed and hoping I get less exhausted. But as yesterday was one of my rare long, long days, with getting up early to get the car fixed and then off to my alma mater to putter around in the library and then to my sister-in-law's and her husband's place for a post-Thanksgiving gettogether which I'll talk about sometime, well, I needed the sleep. I got up, dislodging the younger, white cat who'd been sleeping next to my body on top of the comforter, and suggested he turn down the yammering idiots just a tad. That set him off sulking about how he just can't watch anything when the house isn't shaking from the volume.
A couple hours later in an actually quiet house I started waking, and found some curious resistance on my legs. I peeked up and it was the younger cat, curled up in a loop and wedged securely on my ankles. She opened an eye and mrowled very clearly to me, giving me no unclear directions about what I was to do, and I closed my eyes and lay back down for a while.
Sometime later I knew I didn't feel the same pressure on my ankles, so I looked up. She had now spread out lengthwise on her back, between the hills my legs made in the comforter, and she had her paws curled inward and her head tilting back toward my knees. I looked up, and she looked up and mrowled again. I'd have taken a picture, but my camera is in the kitchen and that, of course, would require getting out of bed.
When it really counts she is a very good cat. If I ever get out of bed I'll let you know.
Trivia: On 26 November 1832 the New York and Harlem Railroad inaugurated the first horse railway in the world, running from the Bowery at Prince Street to Fourteenth Street. Source: 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York, Clifton Hood.
Currently Reading: 1898: The Birth of the American Century, David Traxel.