The Flavour of Warmth During a Taste of Autumn

The temperature fell precipitately in southern Alberta last week. It is climbing again, and is supposed to be almost summery next week. It is only September, of course, and the weather is usually quite pleasant in this month. The extremes of August are past and those of November are yet distant. But now and then, especially in this part of the country, temperatures fluctuate wildly, for brief periods, creating very cold days in the summer, and warm days in the winter.

Seeing Tungsten crouching on a cushion like a little (very little) old lady pulling her coat tight against herself in the teeth of chilly winds made me think it was time to bring out the heating pads for the cat-beds. I decided to take the opportunity to clean the two matching cat-beds. I brushed them and removed a shopping bag’s-worth of cat-hair. The collection was a neutral beige, as it was an amalgam of hair from half a dozen felines. Then I threw the beds’ components into the wash.

The result was clean and, once through the dryer, free of most of the remaining hair that had been clinging to them. I think the majority of the hair ‘came out in the wash’, as the saying goes - literally, in this case. There must have been half a pound of cat-hair on the sides of the washing machine’s drum. I’m glad most of it did not drain.

Then the heating pads were inserted under the cushions and Tungsten was reintroduced to one of her favourite spots. She abandons cat-beds during the warm months, but enjoys them in winter, even if the temperature doesn’t fall very low. Right now, she continues to come to bed with me, but I anticipate a time when she will cleave more frequently to the cat-bed. I don’t mind. Her comfort was, after all, uppermost in my thoughts when I cleaned these cat-beds and put in the heating pads. Kola, who is restricted to the parlour now only when I am absent, has his own heating pad under a blanket of towels on the couch in that room, and, as you can see from the picture above, he and Tungsten are not the only ones to love the warmth.

But it’s for my skinny senior cat that the cat-beds were renewed, one placed at a slight altitude, so Tungsten would not have to worry about Cammie’s attitude, whenever the Siamese princess passes. I think it’s a success so far: I didn’t notice that smug little smile on the tiny terror’s face until just now.