A Carnival of Cats

I can't say he didn't warn me. He did meow.

I'm lying on the loveseat in the sunroom, trying to rest my aching back. It's agreeably warm from the late afternoon sun and the steady drone of the television is making me sleepy. The eldest cat, remarkably agile for his years and still light on his feet when he wants to be, launches himself from the floor and with a plaintive meow, lands squarely on my midsection. It's way too late to tense my muscles and prepare and I'm barely able to catch my breath. He makes eye contact long enough to issue a second meow then completes his ritual with a front and back leg stretch and an extravagant yawn before arranging himself and promptly going to sleep. No matter what we tell ourselves, cat owners are, first and foremost, furniture. It often takes us years to accept this simple fact but it's an irrevocable truth. The cat has known it all along.

He doesn't stay long - another universal truth about cats is that they frequently have the attention span of an amoeba - and when he hears or senses something that stirs his curiosity, he snaps awake like a spring, digs his claws into my sides and thighs, and takes off like a shot. The second eldest cat, the tabby, immediately arrives to take his place. She is timid, wary, and far more cautious, approaching by stealth and silence and waiting patiently for an invitation. When I give it, she reaches up with her front paws and then slowly and delicately climbs to my side. She's too dignified to actually sleep on me and is quite content to curl around my ankles, keeping her back to the wall in case of a sudden attack. I scratch her ears and she pushes back firmly but gently, then settles in with her paws tucked neatly beneath her. It isn't long until she's startled by the slam of a car door from next door. She tenses and does a quick scan for any approaching hazard then slinks down, jumps lightly to the desk and then to the top of the armoire. I admire her gracefulness, her discretion and most of all her refusal to run with the crowd.

An empty lap is not to be tolerated and it's just minutes later that the younger black cat appears.

Though the largest of my feline family, he's the quietest and the most independent and I only know he's there because of his tiny, mouse-like meow. He alerts me to his presence with a two second warning and springs, all 20 pounds landing with a considerable thump on my chest. I'm nose to nose with his heart-shaped face and brilliant yellow eyes - I do try my best not to play favorites but he is the most elegant and gorgeous thing - so I don't protest when he twines around my neck and nudges my chin. His long hair gives him a big cat aura, much like a lion, and he soon slips to my side and burrows compactly against me, his head resting on my shoulder and his entire body vibrating. He consents to my stroking his thick fur. It's hard to tell which of us is more content.

The 4^th wave is the tuxedo cat, an even tempered animal if ever there was one, affectionate to the point of being obnoxious and louder than all four put together. She's more muscled up than actually overweight and when she decides she needs attention, she's relentless. She announces her arrival with a determined series of head butts and a stream of nerve-grating meows and eventually she pushes and shoves her way onto the loveseat, perches on my knees and stares at me defiantly, daring me to try and dislodge her. I suspect that my recent back pain is a result of lifting up the hatchback on my little car since the struts went bad but it's equally possible that lifting the tuxedo cat out of my computer chair two or three times a day is a contributing factor. She's a hefty girl without the slightest delicacy, distressingly vocal and frequently directly in my path. She disdains the concept of right of way and it never seems to occur to her to move.

The last to arrive is the kitten. I hear a chorus of chirping as she clears the gate and a second later she's crossing the threshold at her usual breakneck speed and leaping onto me like a downhill racer. She begins to knead the minute she lands - she has fierce concentration - and her claws sink in like tiny razors. I tap her nose to get her attention and tell her to cut it out and she gives me a resentful look and digs in deeper. I lift her with one hand and deposit her back on the floor but persistence is her middle name and she's back in a flash, winding her small body into a ball and settling herself on my thighs. I decide it's as workable a compromise as I'm likely to get and reach for my newest Stephen King novel but this offends her. She immediately crawls into the underneath space between the book and me and protests with a gentle swipe of her paw. Furniture, she's reminding me, just furniture. Stephen King will have to wait.

For more than tonight, it turns out because I haven't turned on any lights and darkness falls.  It's still comfortably warm and with only the flickering light of the television to see by, I drift off to sleep. My last thought is: this is my life, a carnival of cats.