Well, the cats have definite achieved a sleeping truce. Last night they both snuggled down, one on each side of my right thigh, and proceeded to trap me in place and attain the density of lead. (They both do this by different means. Angus starts at the knees and then stretches out to full length on his back. Ben starts with his chin on my hip and then curls around into butt-warmer mode.)

This was all fine and snuggly until I had to get up to go to the bathroom. I carefully extracted myself, by virtue of putting one foot on the floor and dragging the trapped limb out sideways. Neither one of them moved.

The problem was that when I came back, in order to get back into bed, I had to stick my leg back into the gap between cats. As this gap had only ever been the size of my leg, and was now notably smaller, owing to the tendency of cats to flow*, it was rather like trying to thread a needle with a salami.

Ben made a vague grumpy sound. Angus snored.

I eventually managed to get back into position, thinking vague, five-in-the-morning thoughts about how bizarre it was that a savannah ape was bedding down with a pair of pint-sized predators, and wondering exactly which one of us had been domesticated anyhow, sagged into the mattress, and thought “…my feet are hot.”

It is possible to take a sock off merely by rubbing your foot vigorously against the mattress. Ben woke up enough to gaze vaguely at this spectacle, possibly wondering if a ninja had infiltrated the blankets, but decided that a ninja would not make such a spectacle of itself.** Angus snored a bit more.

I may yet die of cricks in various parts of my anatomy, but at least I’ll die warm.

*Cats, as we all know, are not a solid but a liquid with high surface tension.

**Unless it was rabid. There are few things more pitiable and terrifying than a rabid ninja.