Kiss my cat, NOW!

I've had all manner of pets...from terrifying gold fish, through dogs big and small, to birds and lizards and cats.

It always comes back to cats. I'm a cat person, through and through. As I write this, Fenix is sitting in my lap, purring like an asthmatic after a marathon, and looking up at me trough half closed eyes, waiting for me to lean forward just a bit, so he can give me another cat kiss.

Ewww...his nose is cold and wet and, well, he likes to press it against my face. Don't get me wrong, cat kisses are not as disgusting as dog kisses, where it feels more like you're being "tasted" than kissed, but they don't do much for humans, and I'm not sure what they do for cats. Why do they need to do this?

My cat Cougar is a little more macho in his affections -- he prefers manly head butts. When he's sitting in my lap, he wants to butt heads with me, over and over again. Head butting, while preferable, hurts. It's  kind of a guy thing, I guess. Like a firm hand shake, it's not cool unless you make the other guy see stars. Yeah, his head is that hard.

To make matters worse, they often want to "kiss' at three in the morning, when I'm sleeping. And when Fenix wants to "kiss", well, you don't say no. Understand, he doesn't want ONE kiss...that would be manageable...but he wants to freaking make out! He wants to go on cat kissing me for like 10 minutes, so it literally becomes a fight, with me throwing Fenix off the bed and Fenix jumping back on. If I cover my head with the blanket, Fenix gets pissed and tries to dig beneath it, and when he can't, sometimes he'll jump up and down on my covered head in frustration.

This is no joke. Though at three in the morning, I wish it was.

I'm such a sucker for cats, that I've lived with this for like 8 years...but now that they've been fighting and having other behavior mishaps, I've locked them out of the bedroom. And I must say, it's been nice. I still have to deal with the "kisses", but the late night NOW, DAMN IT thing with Fenix is a thing of the past, and I'm waking up more refreshed and relaxed than ever...

Something just dawned on me (as Fenix kisses me for like the 20th time since I began this post--yes, he's still in my lap) -- maybe what he's trying to do is relax me. I mean, put me in that contented purr state that he's in right now. I used to have a cat, Grey-Grey, that ONLY sat in my lap when I was writing...it was like he sensed that pleasure zone that I slip into when I'm deep in the fictive world I'm creating, and he wanted some of that. He felt it. It was actually pretty amazing. He would sit there and rest his head on one of my arms, which made typing hard, but not impossible. It was like he was soaking up my calm energy...and I think I was soaking up his in some kind of weird, symbiotic feel-good vampiric circle jerk. Hmm...that thought, as unsavory and over-blown as my word choice is, may be the truth behind the cat-human relationship conundrum! You have just been educated, my friends (:

UPDATE: Yeah, the cat purr is synonymous with the "ohhhhhmmm"...they're willing themselves into a calm, relaxed state, and trying to take us with them. Cats are spiritual beasties! Cats are charismatic co-pilots! Cats are in touch with the universal it, and they're willing to share it with those of us who do them well. Cats are the doorway!