It's Moments Like This...

This is my cat. His name is Norm.

He is a night screamer. That means when I go to bed, he walks around my apartment and meows shrilly and perpetually into the night. Often he does so while carrying a cat toy in his mouth, which doesn't quite muffle the sound but only makes it a little less throaty.

He is very demanding during my waking hours, as well. His tiny brain doesn't understand how massive his body is, and he enjoys sitting on top of me and getting all up in my grill. Not content to rest on my lap, purring gently and appreciatively, Norm insists on intense face-to-face contact.

He also has all his claws. So when he climbs up my torso for a face rub and contracts his little paws in kitty pleasure, he creates puncture wounds in my collarbone. This will often cause me to yell "AAAGGH! Get OFF of me you big stupid jerk!" and shove him off of me. This in turn will cause his back-paw nails to tear at my delicate upper leg skin. At which point I emit a string of expletives with great fury.

Clearly, Norm and I have a complicated relationship. More than once I have threatened to "set him free" and I have conspired to "donate" him to strangers on at least 5 different occasions. But, still, we have our moments.  For instance, every once in a while, he'll be lying on the couch, and I'll watch him roll over onto his back, exposing his giant, fluffy orange tummy.

And then something magical happens.

He rolls a little too far, and to his great surprise, rolls right off the edge of the couch and crashes to the floor in a whirlwind of flailing stick legs and incredulous disorientation. And when he looks up at me with those cracked-out eyes that are filled with terror, I think to myself, it's moments like these that make it all worthwhile.

Then I give him a big bear hug, we share a good laugh, and all is right with the world again.