I stretched out on my bed, on top of the sheets, fan blowing away the heated air and ensuring I’d have a comfortable night. I was ready and excited for a nice, long summer sleep. But something was missing.
“Where’s Freddie?” I asked myself.
“Freddie!” I called. “Where are you, buddy? It’s sleep time!”
My only answer was the sound of his tail striking the carpet next to the bed.
I rolled over so I could peek over the side of the mattress. Green feline eyes met mine.
“Aren’t you coming to — wait. What are you doing?”
“Going to sleep,” he said, the duh implied.
“Down there?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, impatiently.
I paused while we studied each other.
“On top of my shoes?”
You know how this works, but as always, a gentle reminder:
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He was draped inelegantly across my sneakers, which I had left on the floor next to the bed, in such a way that if he laid his head down, it would be inside one of them.
He stared back at me, but did not answer. His tail beat an irritated staccato against the floor. I noticed his arm tightened ever so slightly drawing the left shoe just a little closer to his body.
“Freddie,” I said, then stopped. I wasn’t sure what to say about it.
I rested my chin against the edge of the mattress and watched him as he shifted and fidgeted, getting more of his large, furry body on my shoes. Now one of his paws was inside the left shoe, while his head hovered above the right. Eyeing me suspiciously, as if I were going to reach down and snatch one from him, he lowered his head until it was below the laces.
“Ewww!” I said.
His head popped back up. “What?” he asked.
“Don’t put your head inside my shoe! I had those on my feet all day. All day, every day, for like a year!”
He looked down into the shoe and then back up at me. “So?”
I shook my head at him. “Do you do this every night?”
“No,” he said. “Sometimes I sleep next to you. Sometimes I sleep in your shoe for a little while and then I sleep next to you.”
I opened my mouth to respond to that, then closed it again. “Hmmmm,” I said. “I’m not sure how to feel about that. Do you prefer my shoes to my bed?”
He lowered his head a bit and sniffed my shoe. I tried not to wince. I mean, they don’t smell bad — really, they don’t! — but they aren’t a rose garden, either. It’s summer. I sweat some times. I walk lots of places. Not all of them are clean.
He gave a noncommittal grunt and hugged the shoes closer.
“I’m not going to take them from you,” I said.
He shot me a glare. “No, you aren’t.”
“One time, before you were born,” I told him, “I got some stickers that had catnip oil on them and I put one in my sister’s shoe. She couldn’t understand why Homer kept biting her heel.” I laughed at my own cleverness.
He perked up. “I put stuff in shoes sometimes, too!” He chirped.
I stopped laughing. “What?”
“It’s a good place to keep things,” he said, sagely.
“Like what?” I asked slowly.
He shrugged, rubbing his head against the laces. “Things.”
I made a mental note to start checking my shoes before putting them on. A cat toy or even a cricket I could handle, but we have a lot of spiders this time of year, shudder.
I shifted a bit on the bed to get into a position where I would be more comfortable but could still watch him. He was totally engrossed in rubbing his scent all over as much of my shoes as he could. “What do they smell like to you?” I asked.
“Like you,” he said, “and now me.”
“Is that a good smell?”
He stopped marking the leather and looked up at me. “Smells aren’t good or bad,” he said. “But it’s a friendly smell.”
“That's nice,” I said.
“No, it’s just us,” he said, going back to work.
After a while he seemed satisfied and laid his head back down in my shoe. “You’re really going to sleep like this?” I asked.
“I’m already sleeping like this,” he responded, his voice muffled by the shoe his nose was buried in.
I sighed and rolled over, back onto my pillow. “You’re so weird sometimes,” I said, resigned to sleeping alone. “And I’m going to need those in the morning!”
“...mine...” he muttered sleepily.
“Everything is,” I agreed.
Happy Caturday, Peeps! Every pootie I’ve shared a space with has loved shoes, and Freddie is no exception. It was just this last week that I discovered that he’s been draping himself over my sneakers to sleep some nights. My shoes don’t normally make it all the way into my bedroom, but they did twice this week. And what I described here is basically how it all went down.
I’ll be in and out of comments today, what with the job and all. Have a great day!