Undercover Agent

By California standards, this past week has been quite chilly. I also
have an apartment that is singularly hard to heat, as one almost can't
tell the difference when the furnace is on unless one is standing
within a three foot radius of it. Every morning after breakfast, my
girls park themselves in front of the wall unit, and then start
complaining when the furnace turns off when the set temperature has
been reached.

So after that lengthy preamble, Nina has found an ingenious way to
stay warm. =o) She gets up on the middle shelf of my book case, then
climbs onto the bed but UNDER my comforter, and there she stays, making
a little Nina-sized hill in the sunny patch in the middle of the bed.
=o) This is when she and her mother aren't lying close beside each
other or me.

So what tricks have other cats in this clowder learned for staying
warm?

CATherine...

All my cats hog the space in front of the wood stove when it is going.
Otherwise, they fight over the moving sunny spots. Djoser is funny at
that. He will move along with the sunny spot a little at a time! He
also is a nest builder. I keep a blanket covering the bedspread; it is
easier to wash the cat hair off than the spread is. Djoser likes to
pull at the top of the blanket until it forms a sort of notch shape.
Then he will burrow under it and pull it around just right until he
has a circular nest with a hood. And he will sleep there for hours,
winter or summer.

Sam...

Smokey is our 00-something. We have a top blanket on our bed. In cold
weather we frequently find a Smokey-lump under the top blanket.
Unfortunately, it's also caused him to be sat upon when he curls up too
close to the foot of the bed (where I sit to get out my socks for the day).

Joy...

My old kitchen range had a pilot light in the oven. Tawny (RB) used to get
on top of the stove and lie right in front of the vents from the oven. I
guess as he got older, he had trouble getting warm, because he would do this
even in the summer.

Kreisleriana...

Hey, there's this girl!

Meg's caption is "IM ON UR OVEN . . . toasting my 'tockz." ;)

My little Mimi used to sleep on the radiators. My mom would say,
"Your cat is getting a hot @$$."

Theresa

Make Levees, Not War

CatNipped...

Jessie jumps to the top of the aquarium either in the living room or DH's
bedroom and lies on top of the light strip. Alternatively she will lie on
top of the computer monitor in DH's office. (These spots are determined by
where her daddy happens to be at the time since she never lets him out of
her sight and wails pittiably whenever he leaves the house).

Sammy doesn't seem to need a warm place to lie - I think, being a Maine Coon
cat living in Houston, she stays plenty warm enough.

Demi is always on a window sill in whichever window the sun happens to be
shining.

Bandit never leaves my bed any more except to eat and go to the litter box,
but lies in the spot next to my bedside lamp.

Hugs,

CatNipped

jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...

I don't have central heating, but instead have space heaters installed
along the walls of 3 rooms in the apartment (bedroom, living room and
office - the kitchen has the stove :)). The advantage to this is that I
can heat one room at a time - when I go to bed, I have only my bedroom
heater on, so I don't have to pay to heat the whole place when I'm only
in one reoom.

When I have the living room heater on, all of them like to lie along
the back of the couch and hang their heads over, to best absorb the
heat rays wafting up. (Yes, I know, one shouldn't put the couch in front
of the heater. But my place is fairly small, and there isn't a better
way to arrange the furniture in the room!)

When I come home in the evening, of course the heat is off. (Disadvantage
to non-central heating: I can't install a timer.) Licky seems to do OK
with that, and Smudge is usually outside, but Roxy is not always immediately
visible. After I've been home about 5 or 10 minutes, and I still haven't
seen Roxy, it occurs to me to check the bed for a Roxy Lump. Yep, that's
where she usually is! (Sometimes the Roxy Lump is under a throw rug.)

Jo Firey...

My personal favorite is when the dog and a cat both end up on the sofa while
pretending the other one does not exist. Given a long enough period of
peace and quiet they will gradually end up rump to rump, sharing body heat
while still pretending they are each the only one on the sofa.

Kreisleriana...

Stinky and Dante do that all the time!

Theresa

Make Levees, Not War

Kreisleriana...

Dante is an undercover man, too. HE climbs up the side of the bed
like a little mountain climber, but UNDER the comforter, and makes
that little moving lump in the bed. But for some reason, being under
there seems to make him very excited, and he tries to run around under
there. Eventually, he sort of explodes out of there with a major case
of zoomies.

Theresa

Make Levees, Not War

Shiral...

Or else he finds a lot of heat-seeking Bedmice to hunt! =o) Nina
crawled under the covers with me last night and she stayed there ALL
night until I announced it was time for Kitty Breakfast this morning.
It's nice, she's the first real undercover cat I've ever had.
Unfortunately, she does occasionally spot a bedmouse that needs
discipline, only to discvoer it makes Meowmie yell "OW! You little
*&&^%!!"

jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...

Bedmice are a very noisy species!

annoyed...

Our bed has an electric blanket, a knit blanket, a comforter, and wool
blankets on top of the comforter to provide a warm, soft surface for Five
to sleep on. Given the natural gas prices here, we keep the thermostat
down and stay warm with the electric blanket. On colder nights Five nudges
her nose under the top sheet and crawls under, circles around, and puts her
head on the same pillows our heads are on. This way her top gets the
warmth from the electric blanket radiating downward, her belly gets heat
from the pre-warmed fitted sheet, and she's snuggled between two humans for
extra heat :) She'll cuddle like that for a while to warm up then go back
to her spot on the bed (which is wherever she darn well pleases).