Things I learned while trying to get to sleep last night

[james_davis_nicoll]

Eddie spends a lot of the night trotting around the building and most of his routes cross me at some point.

There is a limit to the number of times Blotchy will let Tapestry smack in the face for sleeping near me and even though Taps took off as soon as Blotchy stood up, she still can't outrun him.

Waking up to find Nameless staring intently at my face isn't half as disturbing as waking up to find her leaning over my face apparently in mid-bite (Note: no teeth made contact. As soon as she saw I was awake, we stared at each for a while and then she flounced off). She better not have decided I am food.

Comments

[maruad.livejournal.com]

Maybe Nameless only thinks part of you is food... ie your nose.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

That's not better!

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Oh, Groucho will flip out at Cleo after about ten minutes of Cleo obsessively grooming Groucho's head into meticulous but saliva-covered perfection and Eddie has figured out how to undo the straps on my CPAP mask. I wonder how much time he spent on that?

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

I'd be more worried about that than occasional biting...

[schizmatic.livejournal.com]

I always kind of wonder what cats get up to when people sleep or are out. But in the end, I'm not entirely sure that I want to know...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It's pretty clear he's been practicing because it only took him about five seconds to get the strap out of the J-shaped slot that holds it in place.

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

Smushy uses bites (half-assed ones) to explain that I Am Not Making With The Petting, despite forty million finger raps between the eyes to explain that that's not acceptable behavior. So it may just be that Nameless is helping you to understand that time for sleeping is now over, human.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Waking up to find Nameless staring intently at my face isn't half as disturbing as waking up to find her leaning over my face apparently in mid-bite

Well, there was that old superstition that cats could drink the souls out of sleeping children or the ailing... though it could be less soul-drinking (or testing to see if James needs more basting with tuna oil) and more Nameless getting a really-good scent; some cats do a yawn-pant to boost olfactory signals. I wonder if that posture led to the myth?

-- Steve's just shooting in the dark on this one, though, as he's hardly an expert in feline behaviour. (If there is such a thing.)

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

When you're wearing it or when it's just lying there?

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I always assumed the soul-sucking idea came from the fact that (a) babies are warm and cuddly and (b) their breath smells like milk.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

While I am wearing it.

[julesjones]

If you ever end up in intensive care, *don't* let anybody bring Eddie to visit.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

That's disturbingly clever. This being Eddie, does he then want attention or is he just happy he's figured something else out?

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Nameless was probably sniffing you intently--the open-mouth thing is called the flehmen response, and it's what cats do when they find something that they want to sniff intently. It funnels the scent-laden air past this sensory organ they have (horses have it too) to get more info.

There was a fantasy/sf novel that touched on it and the atrophy of this organ in humans--a woman of one of the Pueblo tribes, in the process of delivering an airplane to a client on some planet finds a settlement of other Pueblo people that nobody knew about, the tribe having formed a symbiotic relationship with giant sentient dragonflies. Fairly typical that I'd remember that detail but not the useful ones like author or title. ;-)

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

I read that book too. Here it is: People of the Sky. And yes, my cats do this too.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

He wanted attention.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Not that I want you punctured, but I confess I am rooting for Nameless. I don't know quite what I'd like her to do, but you know, just general rooting.

[liabrown]

Wasn't one of the old superstitions that cats would steal children's breath?