My Lap Cat

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Anna, my angelic little shelf cat. Tonight, I'll share a picture (albeit not a particularly good one) of Mischa. If you're having trouble getting the bearings on this photo, let me help: Mischa is lying across my lap, partially tucked under a lap tray on which my MacBook Pro is resting. I'm sitting in the recliner, working at the computer, and as usual, Mischa has burrowed under my elbow, settled into my lap, and is periodically issuing a faint kittenesque mewling sound to let me know that I need to type less and scratch more. The blue denim is, of course, my jeans; I happened to have the camera sitting near my chair, so I held the camera up above my head and took the shot, hoping it would turn out.

I've never known a cat that was so determined to spend every evening in someone's lap; we've had Mischa for almost two years now, and she's been a lap cat almost all of that time. If anything, she's gotten more insistent about it now; when she sees me going to my chair to work on Comic Shop News or to bounce around the internet or to natter on in my blog, she immediately jumps up to the lamp table next to the chair and waits for me to sit down, at which point she burrows down to her lap position and settles into a contented, purr-heavy sleep.

The photo doesn't do her justice, by the way; Mischa is a bit, furry, miniature pony of a kitten, fourteen and a half pounds with very little fat. She's broad across the back (I always say that she's built like a coffee table), loves to gallop, and doesn't realize that she weighs almost as much as Anna and our dear old girl Tisha (our eighteen year old cat) put together. But once I sit down, she's a kitten once again, and here she is, back in my lap like she was when she weighed in at three pounds.

It's sorta nice having a lap cat, once you get used to the heat buildup associated with a fourteen pound furball...