ode to Garfield

I must have sat heavily on the sofa for some time. Eventually the ginger cat, having eyed up my lap and carefully calculated, stirred his lazy limbs in my direction. With an ungainly half-jump; half-scramble he arrived and started the long process of resettling himself on my knees. He padded as always, incessantly, with half-moon claws reaching deep enough to touch my skin, even through the denim. Curling the claws a few degrees and then withdrawing, over and over, over and over. His blissful, round face searched out my own. His eyes were tight slits in the sun, half-closing in happiness.
But the claws annoyed me more than usual, nicking my skin, while the heat collecting between our bodies was oppressive. I started fidgeting - my brain was not in the mood for enforced stillness. I shifted, causing the cat to stand up, re-circle and move upwards towards my chest. He tucked his white paws neatly beneath his sternum and looked at me, blinking slowly and purring deeply. Now I felt suffocated and squirmed even more. I sighed deeply, trying to inflate my lungs against the furry mass and wondering vaguely when the cat had become so heavy. He was insistent, he was here to stay. My will finally broke as his whiskers innocently tickled my nose and I tried to force him to shift. With this he seemed to become even heavier still until he spotted a better alternative, somewhere warm and inviting. He bounced up onto the table, using my ribs as a springboard and his claws for good purchase on my chest. There he settled almost gracefully onto the open laptop, overhanging slightly at each edge and looking truly triumphant, while the laptop purred gently back to him.