So Cute

You see? Even if I don’t put my feet up, she finds some part of my body to paralyze with her enormous furry weight. I mean – my elbow? I couldn’t move my mouse for about 15 minutes!

To be honest, I have a trick to get out of this hold – if I use my other hand to scratch her ears she sits up a little and then I can mouse around a bit. Come to think of it, maybe this isn’t my trick. Now I’m starting to get a little suspicious. Cats, they are very crafty.

Addendum:
A friend of mine inquired as to how much my cat could possibly weigh. While I care for my friend (it always behooves one to say such things about one’s coworkers), it is obvious she doesn’t understand the nature of cats. I thought, perhaps then to instruct her and others of her ilk on the nature of the weight of cats.

You see, a cat’s weight is very deceiving on simple observation. Many, like Zoe, are relatively small and one might suppose that there would be a straightforward relationship between a cat’s size and its weight. Unfortunately this assumption leads to the kind of mistakes that “Mrs. M” makes in her inquiry.

The truth is quite a bit stranger than fiction. A cat’s density, you see, is a function of time and inertia such that a longer a feline of the household variety remains stationary, the heavier they grow. This may sound exceedingly odd, but you don’t have to trust me on this. Simply perform the following experiment (using only one cat of gentle disposition as doing otherwise may well render the experimenter at risk for injury, compression or otherwise): Take said cat, and holding it in both hands recline to the prone position. Place cat on your sternum (or for the claustrophobic, on the abdomen) and wait. Gradually you will begin to notice an increasing warmth. This is, I understand, the metabolic system of the cat kicking into gear once its body has realized it has achieved a stationary position and can now safety begin increasing density. As its density rises, so its weight will increase, as I said, over time. If you are so unfortunate as to fall asleep when you wake you will likely be unable to move at all – or even breathe. Most cats are courteous enough, however, to take breaks so their human friends are uninjured. I know that Zoe will take several trips to the cat box and food dish throughout the experiment just to relieve my discomfort. I have heard of several cats that were not so genial and the rumor is that their density has approached figures resembling the surface of Jupiter. This, I assure you, is quite heavy indeed.

So, in the end, there is no easy answer to the question “how much does your cat weigh?”

Oh, additionally, another odd cat fact that is contrary to reason is that while one would expect them to be heavier when wet (water in the fur and all that) this is not the case. You will actually see them shrink markedly as they loose mass (dissolving, perhaps?) and often they seem to become instantly lighter than air, able to conduct the most remarkable gymnastics mid-air when exposed to the smallest amount of running water, say for example, when one grows too curious and falls into the in-use shower.