One of my favorite feline habits is when they throw their bodies on the ground to get attention. I can't say it means anything, but it appears that females are floppier than males. Rabbit and Jacqueline used to try to out-flop each other all the time, but Jack thinks she won. She can't help but show off her ponderous belly. She lies on the floor, purring heavily, for as long as it takes for someone to congratulate her on how beautifully fat and docile she is (before she harasses Rabbit for unknown slights). As cute as their long-running flopping war has been, it's nothing compared to Athena's talent for taking it to a whole new level. She waits and she watches until the timing is just right. Then she peeps in her tiny, high voice, and suddenly flips upside down with a thump. It catches my attention every time, which is exactly what she wants. As soon as I ask her whether she has once again forgotten how to gravity, and take a step in her direction, she rights herself in a snap, and starts to lead me exactly where she wants me. We walk slowly either toward the glass on the bathroom sink, which may need a human to fill it from 7/8 full to 8/8 full (the horror of an unfull glass!), or we play follow the leader into the laundry room where the cat food is kept. She's the smallest of the Pride, and her belly is tight (the only one of us girls who is shaped that way). It just takes a tiny peep out of that little black face and I reach into the cat food and draw out a handful of eight or ten kibbles, and sprinkle them on the food counter. She has trained me so well. Isn't that the way of many households? The baby runs the show.
Today is the day our neighbor comes over to watch my Sunday Ticket, so that I feel like I'm getting my money's worth out of that impulse buy. Now that my dogs are here, for as long as they are, they get to have their neighbor friend come visit too. Barley the dog came to play. For the first hour or so that he's here, there is nothing but mayhem. They run and play and wrestle and have a grand time. Then the old dogs start to wear out and Barley and Murray have only each other to play with. Murray ends up flipped over in his wheelchair more often than not. It's not the same kind of attention-seeking flop that the cats prefer. But oddly, it doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest. At least it doesn't as long as the weather is okay and he's not out there for too terribly long. Today I tried to right him when I found him upside down, and found that his harness is tearing apart and needing replacement. I can't tell whether it makes it easier for him to flip over, but he seems to be doing it more often than when he left at the beginning of the summer.
I did a little flopping of my own today. I don't know whether my stress level is coming down any, but I'm finding myself capable of naps for the first time in months. I've had three now in less than a month, counting the one during the Panthers game. I was supposed to be getting them daily, and instead I was going on at best two or three hours of sleep combined in any given 24 hour cycle for months. I'm up to four or five a night, sometimes even six, and an occasional nap. This is miraculous improvement. It's all right again.
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