I took my newly adopted cat Helen to the vet to have her toenails clipped, to learn how to do it myself, and to make sure I wasn't killing her slowly and unintentionally with my ignorance of cats.
Two weeks prior, I took her to the same vet straight from adopting her from the Humane Society. Then, I stood by while the vet and her technician examined and stroked Helen, gave her treats, and oohed and aahed over her calm heartbeat. I felt anxious, left out and inadequate.
This time, when the clipping was done, two women, the technician and I, stood watching Helen hovering in the center of the stainless steel examining table. Helen could choose. She walked towards me and pressed herself against my chest. I held her to me.
When Helen leaped onto the bed last night to begin our emerging good-night ritual, she expected to claw her way up the side of my elevated 1902 Sears bed via the sheets and my grandmother's afghan. She clambered, slipped and thumped on the floor in a baffled, bruised heap. She no longer had her climbing tools. She hadn't remembered that to save my skin, my furniture, and her own domesticated life, I had had her changed.
I jumped out of bed, apologizing, trying to stroke her. She accepted a moment or two of my remorseful pats, then moved away and sat on a pillow (that used to be in a chair but is now trippingly in the middle of the hall for her convenience as a secondary bed), looking dazed.
I moved her multi-leveled scratching post and a folding chair to the end of my bed to make steps, then coaxed her with star-shaped dry cat food to climb each level so she could still get in my bed, clawless. She accepted her "training" and treats, then jumped off the bed and went downstairs.
I felt so sad. Although I have had sleeping problems for several years, and sleep little when Helen is there, I have come to love having her in bed with me. I lie down around nine or ten; around one in the morning, she wakes me with a yowl, leaps onto the bed, and walks straight onto my chest. In the dark, she moves from one paw to the other, her face near mine. One time she brushed her tiny wet nose and furred cheeks and tickly whiskers oh so delicately against my face with such gentle softness that I'm not sure it happened. I felt my heart rise and my face lift not to miss even a moment of such tentative intimacy.
Then she turns and her tail pummels my face as her feet continue to lift up and down on what I would consider inhospitably bony ribs and small breasts. Once more around and she falls onto my chest, taking her time to lower her head for sleep.
Each time I fill my lungs, I lift nine and a half pounds of sleeping cat. I wear a Helen blanket.
She leaves eventually for the center of the bed and I sleep deeply until I roll over onto my stomach. Then Helen walks onto my back, does her four-paw dance, and settles herself. I can imagine a side view of us, a woman face to the mat like a wrestler, pinned by a sprawled cat. I awaken again to turn slowly. Helen rides from the small of my back to my ribs, to my belly, as if she were in a log-rolling contest, until I'm flat on my back. I am again under a Helen blanket.
Why do I allow such an invasion of my personal space, such disruption of my routine, such startling arousals from hard-won sleep? My little sister, Margaret, and I rarely shared a bed as children, but when we were on a trip or staying with family, I would wake up with Margaret sleeping on me trustingly, profligately, her head on my far shoulder, her tiny arm heavy across my throat, one leg on mine, the other by its side as if we were one body.
I remember lifting parts of her off of me, feeling a mix of impatience, guilt, fear and longing. In my older sisterhood, I judged her sleep as undisciplined, yet I wanted to be able to protect her. She seemed so vulnerable in her need to be close to someone just a little larger and only two years older than she. I felt too small myself to defend her from whatever was lonely or fearful on her side of the bed.
A yowl and a great leap, my carefully constructed stairs ignored, and here is a small being lying on my chest as if she has every right to, as if no rules apply, as if lying on me adds something to her night that being at a distance does not. I remember the bittersweetness of lying under a Margaret blanket. This time, I do not move the small being away.
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