Bridging the gap

A long time ago I had a small, monastic single bed. It was fine for my purposes, and perfect for the kind of room I wanted at that stage in my life – full of books, posters, step-rugs and lots of junk that the average teenager collects and cherishes. I occasionally fell off it when I did an especially violent flip to change sides, but I kept that bed with me until I was long past the teenage phase, literally, chronologically and metaphorically, and I managed fine with it, even after we moved to another apartment that needed furniture of a different ilk. Then I transferred myself to another city and slept for quite a long while in a bed that was enormous, but actually two beds joined together. As a result, it had two mattresses and if, for any reason - from repacking suitcases to getting into a morning exercise routine for some strange reason that may have had a little to do with the fact that I had to breathe in deeper each day to zip up the same pair of jeans and did not have the excuse of then just having come out of the dryer – the two got even slightly separated, some part of my anatomy would inevitably slide into the gap thus created, sometimes rather painfully.

And then I got a cat.

While that, to most, would sound utterly mystifying and totally illogically unconnected, it actually is not. My cat would sprawl his entire length over the bed, sometimes pushing me into one far corner. He also liked sleeping with his head on my pillow, using one soft paw to shove my head off it, but keeping that same paw in my hair to stop me going very far. When it was cold, he would cuddle close to me, often clambering on to some part of me to lie curled up with his head as close to my neck as he could get it; and when it was warm, he would stretch out right under the fan with one leg towards me, ‘holding my hand’. All of which mandated that I needed a new bed in my room at home.

So when I moved back to Mumbai, I had that bed made. But the cat left me sooner than either of us believed he would and I was left alone in my new bed, bigger and better and more suited to sprawling over.

And then we acquired Small Cat – or did Small Cat acquire us? She spend the nights of her first two weeks in our apartment cuddled against my tummy, occasionally emerging from under the sheets to eat, drink water, use her catbox or take a short and tentatively exploratory stroll out of my room. And then she suddenly got braver and moved into the rest of the flat, mainly to Father’s space, following him from his room to the study to the kitchen to wherever he went, even sitting dolefully outside the bathroom when he showered. Now she alternates her nights - when she is not having certain hormonal issues, as now – between his bed and stalking around the house playing with a ping-pong ball, a feather, a kidney bean…

And I do my own little sprawl across my bed. No gaps to fall into, no edges to fall off of. And no need to worry about when to turn to avoid squashing the cat!