Aggressive cat cuddling

One of the reasons I like cats more than dogs is because you have to work to earn a cat's affection and respect. They have their own way of looking at the world. Naturally they see themselves as the centre of it, and all attention is just what is due them.

Dogs just give it up. Dogs are all about "oh yeah, my favourite thing!" for everything that happens to them.

The exception for cats is when they don't want it. I love cuddling them then, combing them, scritching them, paying attention to them. It's ok for a minute, then they start getting grumpy. That's when it gets to be fun. It makes my day to get a grumpy cat to purr against it's will. Occasionally when I want to nap, I will capture a cat to nap with. Sometimes that works, but often not.

I still haven't totally figured out the cat dominance here. Naturally, I know I am the least dominant mammal in the house, that much is clear. But Curtis and Celina seem to take turns being dominant, or they aren't fussed about it, or they're doing it deliberately to play with our heads. Cats like to do that. For such a little cat, Celina can be very pushy.

A long time ago we used to have a cat that liked to wake us up early by jumping on us, or tickling our faces with a paw or tail, or meowing at us. The cure was simple. Unpredictability. When the cat woke me up, there was a small menu of choices. I would tuck him under the covers and firmly cuddle him while breathing in his face, or try to eat his head, and worst of all, I'd lick his face several times. He'd be gone, and quiet, until we got up. The one thing that never happened was getting food. After a while he would hop onto the bed, and snuggle up next to us, usually not within reach of my arms. We could live with that, although he got to be a bit of a pig about the bed. It's hard to move a 20 pound cat.

Yoga was brutal tonight. Often we don't want to go, and we leave happy we went. Tonight I was looking forward to it, and was regretting it by the end of the night. I was so not in a yoga mood. The room was 25 C, and it was right in my face. My knees were feeling weak and unstable. Our teacher had dreamed up this really nice flow that I would have enjoyed in other circumstances, but I bailed out of large chunks of it. At least there was plank in it, though my knees didn't like that either.