Saturday, May 30, 2009

Caturday: The Fine Art of Lap Sitting

Hot weather is here, and Ozma isn't as keen on lap-sitting until it cools down later in the evening, but she does want to be where I can't really avoid paying attention to her. Solution: the shelf I use as a mouse surface.This explains why my mouse behaves in extraordinary and erratic ways from time to time: the optical window gets filled with cat hair. Nuisance, but until a couple of weeks ago I thought yet another mouse was dying.Of course, if she keeps knocking it off onto the floor, it will die. And when it finally does cool down, this is really where she'd rather be.
As you can tell from the odd positioning of the hind leg, she has not mastered the traditional feline art of lap sitting. She has, however, come up with a very workable solution. For her. Note the way her right leg is wrapped over my left arm. Her left leg is wrapped underneath it. She has learned to anchor herself to the hoomin's forearm...
Once she goes to sleep, I can support her legs with my left hand, which leaves my right hand free for computer games and allows her to retract her claws. But until she does, she doesn't like that position, and immediately reverts to the above posture if I try to put her hind legs up on my calf. So the price I pay for having a cat that has learned she actually does like sitting on my lap for a few hours each evening is a few minutes of pins and needles. And having a left arm that looks like it has a minor case of road rash.

It's worth it.

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