Posts tagged with "Dolly"

Fatness In Stereo

Thumbnail: Large Dolly in stereo

I’ve tried many times to cap­ture the actu­al size of Dolly’s cur­rent girth, but the cam­era does­n’t real­ly do a good job of it. I fig­ured that the only way to accu­rate­ly show how large she’s got­ten is with stereo­scop­ic images. That way, one can actu­al­ly tell how much Dolly is com­ing off the couch with a bit of depth per­cep­tion. It’s nev­er easy to take stereo­scop­ic pic­tures of a cat. Usually they’ll move or twitch when the alter­nat­ing pho­to is being tak­en, so it almost always has to be done while they’re asleep. Even a twitch of the cam­era strap, or a shuf­fling of feet will be enough to pique the curios­i­ty of a cat

Dolly’s head looks small in com­par­i­son to the rest of her body, but her head is actu­al­ly nor­mal for a cat her age, and it’s her pot bel­ly that’s grown out of pro­por­tion. Every time some­one comes over, I usu­al­ly get a com­ment on how much she’s grown. Outward.

The Cat Gets Fat

Dolly on her pillow as a kitten

There once was a kit­ten who enjoyed sleep­ing in a lit­tle wick­er bas­ket on the top shelf of my desk. I bought her a green pil­low that had a remov­able case, and stuffed it in the wick­er bas­ket so she would be more com­fort­able. She was very hap­py in there, with her birds-eye view of the entire room, and would spend hours upon hours in the lofty enclo­sure.

Soon, how­ev­er, she noticed that the bas­ket was get­ting small­er. It got hard­er and hard­er for her to jump in with­out knock­ing oth­er things over. Eventually, she stopped sleep­ing in there alto­geth­er, as she out­grew the bas­ket and would­n’t fit in its shel­ter­ing walls.

Dolly on her pillow as a kitten

Eventually, I moved the pil­low to my bed, with­out the wick­er bas­ket, and the cat, no longer a kit­ten, resumed her naps there. The pil­low, on the oth­er hand, remained the same size, and no longer sup­ports the sheer girth of the once tiny feline. However, she con­tin­ues to enjoy sleep­ing on it, and has no prob­lem acco­mo­dat­ing for space restric­tions with an uncush­ioned limb or two.

A Cat's Internal Schedule

In the morn­ings, Dolly will wake up from my alarm. When it rings, whether she’s on my legs, on her pil­low, on my neck, or against the wall, she’ll walk to the foot of the bed and stare at the door. At night, she’s usu­al­ly in my room by the time I go to bed. I think she’s final­ly been able to adapt to my sched­ule because it’s the first time I’ve been able to con­sis­tent­ly go to bed and wake up for more two months.