Odelia and Chase had left for work, and Marge and Tex were enjoying a week-long tennis thing with their friends from the tennis club, and so the house was empty. Apart from myself and Dooley, that is. And I have to say, that’s exactly the way I like it. Now, before you go hurling all kinds of silly accusations my way about cats being solitary animals, or even selfish, and that the feline of the species don’t care about anyone other than themselves, I would like to state for the record that this cat, in particular,is very fond of his humans. So fond, in fact, that I’ve managed to stick around for as long as I have. But even cats as keen on his human caretakers as myself need their alone time from time to time. And so I didn’t mind that the house was empty, for it allowed me to luxuriate in the abundance of space the absence of two large humans had left on the bed.
“It’s so nice to finally have the bed all to ourselves, isn’t it, Max?” said Dooley, who wholeheartedly agrees with me on a cat’s occasional need for privacy.
“Absolute bliss,” I said as I explored the innate softness of Odelia’s pillow while Dooley submitted Chase’s pillow to the same treatment, happily kneading it.
“I don’t like these ergonomic pillows, though,” said Dooley, touching on one minor point of criticism. “They’re too hard—and they’ve got bumps in all the wrong places.”
“Chase might argue that the bumps are in all the right places,” I murmured. After all, these ergonomic pillows are designed to support the human neck, apparently a very delicate part of the human anatomy, as Chase often complains about something or even someone being a pain in the neck. More often than not this someone might be a criminal he’s been pursuing, or a member of the public making his life difficult with outrageous requests, or even a police colleague.
In other words: it’s tough to be a human sometimes, having to endure the vicissitudes of life on a daily basis. And especially tough on the human neck.
“Why doesn’t Odelia have an ergonomic pillow?” Dooley wanted to know. He’d abandoned his explorations of Chase’s pillow and retreated to the comfy duvet Odelia had been so kind to smoothen out for us before she left for work.
Tonight Chase might cavil at the presence of a few hairs on his duvet, but that couldn’t be helped. He might even sneeze and rub his face, blaming us for the tickling sensation he experienced, and telling tall tales about cat hair being the bane of his existence, and wouldn’t it be a good idea to get a dog instead. But Odelia would soon put him straight. She’d say that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas, and would he prefer big fat fleas to a few teeny tiny hairs?
“I guess Odelia doesn’t experience the same kind of pain in the neck her husband does,” I said, though I must confess I hadn’t given the topic a lot of thought before this moment. “Maybe being a reporter is less taxing on the neck than being a cop?”
“That must be it,” Dooley agreed as he finished circling a favored spot and finally deigned it with his presence. “Odd thatwe never get a pain in the neck, isn’t it, Max? I mean, we never use ergonomic pillows and we’re always fine.”
“That’s because the human anatomy is vastly inferior to the feline anatomy,” I said. “When God created man he made a few mistakes, which he decided to rectify when he created the feline, which is why cats ended up being a superior species.”
“What mistakes?” asked Dooley, curious now.
“Well, the human head weighs about eleven pounds, and all of that weight has to be supported by seven vertebrae and around twenty muscles. That’s a lot of weight being brought to bear on the poor neck. Add to that the fact that most people now go through life glancing at their mobile phones on a practically continuous basis, and the pressure increases manyfold.” I was warming to my subject now, and felt like a professor standing in front of an auditorium of eager pupils soaking up his wisdom. “When a human holds their head at a forty-five-degree angle the weight on the neck increases to almost fifty pounds.”
“That’s a lot of weight,” Dooley marveled.
“Yeah, it’s a miracle humans can still function.”
“It’s all because of gravity, though, isn’t it, Max?”
“Possibly,” I said, yawning cavernously.
“If gravity wasn’t pulling on them so much they wouldn’t need ergonomic pillows or walking sticks or even walkers.”
When we were out and about in Hampton Cove the day before, we’d come across an old lady with a walker, which had caused Dooley to marvel at this curious invention.
“True,” I admitted.
“I mean, I’ve never seen a cat with a walker before—have you?”
“No, I can’t say that I have,” I agreed.
“Must be because we’re so much smaller than humans, and we don’t walk upright. And so the forces of gravity affect us a lot less than they do humans.”
“Mh,” I said, my eyes drooping closed as sleep got ready to envelop me.
“So the obvious solution would be to dial down this gravity thing, Max.”
“And how do you suppose we do that?”