the sleepy language of cats

Remember that book "The Secret Language of Sleep"? I've never found the descriptions very accurate but Amelia Bauer's illustrations are so beautiful and I've been thinking about them a lot recently at night, sandwiched between the boyfriend and the cat.

Maybe the reason our language of sleep reads more like the story of Babel is because our equation involves a third, a twelve-pound monster who takes up half the bed. Some nights he sleeps between us, his arms stretched in one direction or the other, forcing us toward our respective sides. Other nights he claims the bottom of the bed, leading us to curl around him and each other. I'm not sure what this means for us, if anything. All I know is that I have a new excuse to study the actions of Monsieur Chaton. I have begun to diagram and classify his most common positions.

Please click on these to make them larger, they are much more attractive that way.

The Field Mouse:


The Thriller:


The Cheese-Wheel:


Sometimes I think, did I really spend four hours on that? The answer is always yes.