Cats can be problematic. Ours definitely

Cats can be problematic. Ours definitely is. He’s a cowardly cat, afraid of his own shadow and dependent on us to keep him safe. He’s also a house cat and proud of it. He has no wish to go outside, looking out the windows as if examining another galaxy.

Most of all, though, he knows what’s important to us and he commandeers whatever that thing is. Often whatever paperwork I’m dealing with on the table. Usually my laptop.

Once, when he took a stroll across the keyboard, getting the laptop to work again required a trip to the nearest computer repair shop. After that I protect the keyboard with whatever is handy so he can’t get to it. But he can and does choose to sleep on the closed laptop. So I can’t work on it unless I disregard his feelings entirely and shove him away. Which of course I never do because he’s so sad at being displaced that guilt prevents me from pushing him away.

But today, after half an hour snoozing on my laptop, he decided to let me get some work done. Actually, he decided to take a stroll through his kingdom … the house … and see what was going on. I took advantage of his generosity and am now getting some blog posts done.

At least he’s polite about claiming whatever he wants. And nice. And has a personality that meshes with ours.

Domestic cats are a whole different breed from lions, tigers, and cougars. They just take what they want and anyone who gets in their way had better start running. No manners at all. I think about the wild kind of cat, the kind of nasty cougar that inspired Wanted Sharpshooter, every time Smoky looks at me with that sleepy expression he has and simply purrs as he snoozes on whatever I want at the moment. So thank you, Smoky, for letting me actually get some work done today.