Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Cat-Dependent

December 27: Ordinary joy. Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?


Do you know what a James T. Kirk roll is?

It's this:



When Vinny is in a particularly exuberant, playful mood, he will rip from one end of the house to the other, stopping himself at each turnabout with the James T. Kirk roll. His stamina for this, one of his favorite games, is awe inspiring. He'll keep it up for 15...20 minutes - back and forth, back and forth, barrel roll after barrel roll - until he finally collapses into a heaving heap of flesh and fur. Sated.

I love watching him do this.

Honestly, I just love watching him.

I love how he'll stand on the closed toilet lid with his front paws perched on the edge of my claw-foot tub with a look of abject terror as he gazes from the ripples of water to me in my nakedness as I soak in heat and lavender.

Photo Found via Creative Commons

Or how, when he's nestled on his $80 chiropractic pillow which fits his 9-pound bum to a tee, he makes squinty-eyed Jack Nicholson faces at me as if to say, "I love you. I am content."

I love how he greets me at the door each afternoon, his tail quivering in excitement, as he talks to me, follows me from the kitchen to the bedroom to the bathroom and "tells" me all about his day.

I love how he allows me to rub in between his toes, giving him a little foot massage...just before he starts to make biscuits on whatever flesh of mine he can find.

But most of all, I love how, at the end of each day as I lie in bed reading, he perches at the end of my bed, waiting patiently for me to take that last drink of water, to kick off my socks, to turn out the light, and fluff up "his" body pillow so that he can approach and curl his paws around my neck with his head buried under my chin.

His purrs melt into tiny cat snores and into dreams as he and I both drift off into sleepy-time bliss.

That is profound (ordinary moment) joy.


How Vinny & I sleep...except that's not me. That's a monkey.

3 comments:

Michael said...

I'm a cat lover who has about a million excuses not to adopt and then I read a column like this and all by itself one little column starts to upset the balance of at least 950,000 of those excuses. Lucky Vinny and lucky you!

MsSparrow said...

purr therapy is the best therapy! I loves the Vinny he is such a cutie.

zero hour said...

the one thing I HATE about my building is NO PETS..I'm dying for a little wacky kitty again..but..sigh it is not to be ,until I ever move that is....