41 Comments on “Back Naps For Hep Cats”

1. Also, I can’t believe I just wrote that.

2. It’s a brave man who owns dark cats and white couches.

3. I think Kodi the Magnificent should probably be photoshopped into this picture. As I look at my couch right now, Literary Lucy is on her back waving her paws in the air as she chases dreambunnies…

4. I can’t help but think it’s a diversion. Where’s Zeus?

5. I seldom find myself quoting disney films, but I will agree that everybody wants to be a cat, because a cat’s the only cat that knows where it’s at.

6. My Maine Coons are with-it and cool.

7. Groovin’ on a ‘nip nap?

8. I see two tummies that really need to be rubbed.

9. Greg @ 2

   Since John has a pointed cat, a tortoiseshell cat, and a black-and-white cat, I think there is literally no couch color in the world that will not have cat hair show up on it. If one kind of hair doesn’t get it, the other will.

10. Cats sleeping like that are the ultimate sign that they are comfortable and at ease with their environment.

11. Becca @9
    Do you not think that’s just bad planning?

12. I can’t help but think you keep your house too warm if they’re comfortable sleeping like that!

13. See, my cat does that all the time. I’d never seen a cat back-nap before him. It must be in fashion

14. They’re training for the synchronized napping event in teh kitteh olympics.

15. My Maine Coon sleeps like that.

16. Both my cats end up like this if the fireplace is going. By nightfall, there’s just a warm puddle of furry toes in the air.

17. My first two cats were apparently nerds. My current cat is, by this standard, cooler than Zaphod Beeblebrox.

18. My pale tortie will throw herself down in front of you, roll over and do a hypnotic belly dance so that you MUST PET THE BELLY. She also sleeps on her back when she’s in the mood. For that matter, almost all my cats will occasionally sleep on their backs, especially in the summer when there are sunny windows.

    Mr. Scalzi, I can’t quite believe you wrote that either. Did you wear a beret?

19. arkessian@11: One does not plan for cats. Cats happen. It is our lot to accept them.

    I still think Zeus is up to something.

20. Murphy Jacobs @ 18: I think Yeti, our silver tabby, has been to your tortie’s school. He does what I call the “fluffy belly ambush”: he’ll see a human walking along a constrained corridor, estimate their velocity, then run ahead of them and flop down and show off his tummy just as the human arrives, demanding petting.

    He also likes to help out when I’m on Wii Fit.

21. *snaps appreciatively*

    *takes a drag off a Gaulois*

    Cool, man.

22. Play them some Sun Ra. All hep cats like music from Saturn.

    All my cats, of various and assorted colors are magically attracted to my black clothes, where they can shed their multicolored fur.

23. @Dave H #19
    I still think Zeus is up to something.

    He’s working on a hostile takeover of both Amazon and Macmillan.

24. This settles it. When the reincarnation bus comes around in the afterlife, I’m getting on and signing up for housecat. Preferably to be in the care of some middle-aged woman. With a fireplace. Who will dote on me well into her eighties.

25. O Great Scalzi, what an excellent picture of the Beauteous Ghlaghghee and Mighty Lopsided Cat in Repose.

    Do you not feel even a bit guilty when you see how much you take out of Her? Inspiring your daily quota of words is exhausting, even for Magnificent She.

    If only She had better raw material to work with…

    The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club

26. That is some excellent tum-tum action.

27. I’m mostly commenting because of my disbelief that it took Chang, who is not Chang, 25 comments down to lavish admiration of the Beauteous Ghlaghghee and Mighty Lopsided Cat.

    Really, I think the Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club is slipping. 25 comments? Really? Do you not fathom the sekrit hurt the Beauteous One is nursing over your callous neglect? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

28. pwstrain @ 24: I hear that if you dote on enough cats, you get invited into a transcendental conspiracy where everyone takes turns being adored housecats and adoring humans.

29. Dave H. @19
    of course he’ up to something. he’s a cat … and out of eyesight! that’s an automatic.

30. Our two male cats sleep that way for hours on end, apparently its hard work for a cat to be fat and lazy at the same time.

31. @PixelFish Perhaps the entire fan club was napping and had to be roused to agree on a comment for the post.

32. When is the deadline, John?

33. And I saw the best kitteh minds of my generation…uh, scratch that, I don’t know if there’s anything akin to “best kitteh minds.”

34. We have a radiator (hot water, not steam) manifold in our tile-floored bathroom on our second floor. (And now that we have a new furnace, it’s warm.)

    thus our second-floor bathroom is often strewn with tossed-up cats. We recognize then, so they have to live here (we don’t allow anyone to go outdoors, a good policy when we lived on a major street also became a good policy when we moved into a neighborhood with a metric buttload of free-ranging cats. Few of then are truly feral because they are all sleek, well-fed and mostly probably neutered.

35. Can you actually pet those bellies? How can they sleep that way? Oh, to be a cat.

36. I love your cats, they are gorgeous.

37. True story:

    My old tiger cat, Arrow, of late and blessed memory, used to sleep on his back in the middle of my living room. This usually involved his neck and back twisted in opposite directions.

    One hot summer day my roommate saw him like that, sunnyside-up and not moving a muscle. She thought the poor old creature had died quietly of the heat, and after a moment of panic as to just how she’d tell me that my beloved pet had died while I was at work, she decided to remove the pathetic little corpse before it stiffened up. She leaned down to touch a rigid white paw –

    And that was when Arrow woke up.

    Roomie was still somewhat rattled when I got home an hour later. The other cats were cowering somewhere away from the faint echoing screams. And Arrow had stalked away to resume his nap under a chair…sunnyside-up and not moving a muscle…. l

38. arkessian@11: That presupposes it is our esteemed host who has chosen the cats, when, according to written evidence on this blog even, it is mostly the other way around.

39. Just to throw it out there, but I know from experience that sage couches hide fur of all colors very well. Our German Shepherds (with white, brown, black, etc. fur) successfully hide their shedding on them all the time!

40. anyone else wonder if the real story here is that the poor kitties passed out after John, er, shall we say, shared….

41. Poor tensed-up kitty-cats ….