Opportunists

It's gotten chilly in southwestern Pennsylvania the past few nights, and suddenly my year-old kittens are showing me how much they love me.

All summer and spring, had immediate evacuation been called for during the night, I wouldn't have had the least idea where to find Gwenith or Huw. Once I'd retire to bed and shut off the light, they'd simply Disappear. Maybe into the fifth dimension-- I'm sure any self-respecting cat can manage a tesseract.

But now the nights are longer and frankly cold. And if Gwenith is not on the bed when I come to it, she joins me soon afterwards. Always right in the middle, usually lying right over or next to my legs. Huw joins her-- and me-- soon thereafter, snuggling in on the other side, and sometime later Rhadwen takes up her usual place by my shoulder.

And I am so bossed about and ruled by these young felines that I daren't-- dassn't!-- do anything to displease them or make them uncomfortable. If Gwenith is in the middle of the bed when I climb in, I simply have to settle for the slender slip of the bed's side, my back exposed to the breezes as the blankets, weighed down by floofy cat, refuse to extend enough to cover me properly. If Gwen and His High Velvetness her brother Huw arrive to hem me in after I have ensconced myself for the night, you can be sure that I will wake up in exactly the same position in the morning, the brown tabby and the pale ginger clamping my legs together like a vise.

Rhadwen at the age of ten is Miss Free and Easy. I could throw her across the room (I wouldn't, of course) and she'd nonchalantly march back to snuggle up to me, or to rummage through my jewelry case, or to swat things off the nightstand. We have an Understanding. ("Rhadwen, stoppit!!!")

But the young ones, I dare not cross or disappoint. After all, on a cold autumn night who could thwart such a precious show of looooooovvve??? The fact that the only central heating that's on right now is me has nothing to do with it.

Yeah, right. Opportunists!