Tuesday, January 19, 2016

1/19/2016: Unhelpful cat ends up helping after all

Every cat since the dawn of time has intruded on humans' workspaces.  Yesterday I posted such a picture on Facebook of Clinchfield eschewing the empty space on my desk in favor of my bead mat.  Faithful Reader Wille Thompson commented that his household calls it "felix interruptus," and now our household will, too.  Today, I needed to take some pictures of a necklace I made yesterday, and I was having problems getting everything in focus.  Clinch came up to see what I was doing:

"What's that?  Looks tasty!"

I uploaded the pictures to the computer, and in a twist of irony, the best picture of the necklace was one of the ones Clinch was in:

"I'll just lay right here."

I cropped the kitten out, did a little color balancing, and this is what I got:

I may have to let him help me more often!  Uh, based on the clanking sound I just heard from the kitchen, maybe not.

(The beads for this necklace will be part of a demo I'm doing this Saturday, 1/23, from 1:00-4:00 at Knot Just Beads.  If you're in the Milwaukee area that day, come on by!  Tell me Clinchfield sent you.)

In case you're not friends of mine on Facebook, here's the picture I posted yesterday:


I have to keep my bead mat folded over so he can't get the needles, thread, or beads.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

1/16/2016: The Half-On Cat

Pixel likes to sit on our laps - Steve's while he's on the couch and mine when I'm at my desk.  If we're lying in bed chatting before going to sleep, Pixel likes to lie on our chests and walk all over us.  When I sleep, he drapes himself over my legs.  I flop around a lot, so that doesn't work very well.  We end up twisted around each other like malformed pretzels stuck together during the baking process.  I'll give you a second to process that image...  All done?  As I'm sure you can imagine, it's not very comfortable, and I'm glad he doesn't do that every night.

Fe loves Steve's lap, too, and sometimes she gets jealous of Pixel.  She doesn't sit on my lap, but she will sit on the back of the couch I sit on, and sometimes she sits behind me on my office chair.  It's kind of uncomfortable for me because I'm perched on half the chair, and sometimes it's cold, because she paws at my sweater wanting a "tent", so (like I did the other day) I have to take my sweater off and drape it over her.  The things we do for our kitties!

Clinchfield, though, is a "half-on" cat, most of the time.  His front half goes on the raised part of the bathroom counter with his back half on the lower part.  His front half is on my nightstand with his back half on the steps.  Stuff like that.  Recently, he's started being half on us.

Last night we went out to dinner with my mother and stepfather, John, for his birthday.  We ate a lot, and when we got home we just collapsed on the bed and watched a stand-up special by Demetri Martin from Netflix.  Clinch joined us, and I took well over 40 pictures of his half-on-ness over the course of about 50 minutes.  No, I won't show you all of them.  Just the highlights:

Just getting settled


Steve had wiggled his toes


Blowing Mama a kiss (or grooming, whichever is more plausible)

"What's going on up there?"

Doing his Linda Blair impression

Falling asleep sitting up

Oh, no!  He fell over!

Steve tickled Clinch's paw

Immodest kitteh investigates the intrusion

Oops.  Sorry!

Then he fell back asleep, but only for 20 seconds or so.

Steve's leg was starting to get numb, so after Clinch woke up, he pulled the kitten all the way up on  him.

Steve helped Clinch hide his under bits.

Clinch did not approve of forced modesty, so he moved.

Shortly after this, Clinch left for all of 10 minutes.

"Let's try the other side of this leg!"

Clinch watched the rest of special with us.

He seemed riveted by Demetri Martin's last bit.  It must have been the guitar and the harmonica.  Clinch has never heard a harmonica before.

I like that he's starting to cuddle, even if it's only half of him doing it.  I have hopes that soon he'll be a "full-on" cat, like he was for ten minutes a few days ago:


Sorry for the crappy picture - I had to use my webcam.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

1/13/2016: Nap time!

Clinchfield and Pixel love hanging out on the bed at any time of the day or night.  Usually they don't lay near each other, but sometimes I catch them being cuddly like I did on Monday:


I was going to nap this afternoon, and Clinch joined me.  He's been enjoying roaming around under the covers lately, so I threw a corner of the comforter over him to see if he'd burrow.  He decided that he'd rather settle in like people:


It didn't last too long because he heard a noise.  Or maybe he was just irritated with all my moving around and turning the lights on and off.

I tried going to sleep, but Pixel jumped up and trod on my legs.  He does this a lot, circling around and around until he settles down on top of my legs.  It's not bad until I roll over (which I do a lot), then it gets a little pretzeley.  In mid-trod, I got a phone call, and when I was done (with the call and with what the call was about) it was too late to nap.  I checked in with the boys and found them like this:


They had been wrestling, and it looks like Clinch got tuckered out mid-bap.