I’ve mentioned before that I’m a semi-retired nuclear furnace. I don’t mean that entirely symbolically. I run hot all the time. It’s part of the reason the cats all love me (Heather included). I’m always a certain number of degrees warmer than the environment, and when the environment’s cold, that means the best place to be toasty and warm is nestled as close to the interior of my body as you can get.
Since we keep the house cool in the winters to save money and not be planet-killing assholes, that means that even I occasionally get cool. When I sit in the living room near the big open windows, for example. When that happens, the blanket comes out.
If the cats hear me sit and THEN hear the blanket rustle, there is an inevitable scrabbling of little clawed feet as they frantically sprint to try to snag the sodden paradise that is my lap. Have you seen those wildlife documentaries where the migrating wildebeest storm the river en masse? It’s like that, but with less reptiles.
Today, Oscar won the race. He came skidding around the corner so fast that his ass end drifted like a sports car until it got ahead of him until he collapsed into a wreck on the carpet. Undeterred, the feline atrocity jumped into my lap from where it was, punching me straight in the manfruit in his desperate need to be warm.
When I stopped swearing and the tears cleared well enough for me to see, this is what I found. He stayed there for hours, and I didn’t have the heart to move him.
He was a mostly-toasty little chestnut, for sure. What the hell, it’s the holidays, right?
Heh. Nuts.