The Cat Thief

Cipher (The World's Most Amazing Cat, Screw You if You Don't Agree tm) will steal any warm spot in the house. If you get up from the sofa for two minutes to refill your water bottle, you will come back to find your seat has been turned into a cat bed.

If you get up to pee at 3 am you can count on returning to a bed that includes a cat where you were just sleeping.

Sometimes she looks so darned adorable we just don't have the heart to kick her out, so we change seats or move to the center of the bed instead of the side where you usually sleep.

In my case, this cute thievery runs to a non-stop power struggle for control of the most prized object either of us have access to the heating pad.

I have chronic back pain and the heating pad helps. (Not as much as the Vicodin helps, but it helps nonetheless.) I often will curl up on the sofa with the pad set on low to help ease my soreness, while Cipher plots her scheme to steal it from me. Sometimes she comes right out with her paws and tries to slide it out from behind me. Surprisingly enough for her, this doesn't work. So she curls up and gives me the "I am a pitiful cat and nobody loves me" look that she is convinced will get her everything she wants. This, too, doesn't work. So she waits. And the moment my ass lifts off the sofa, she's there. I don't even get to take a step away from the couch before she's moved in for the kill. She'll pull the pad down so it's flat on the sofa and then she'll curl up on it.

And I come back to a rather smug kitty trying hard to look innocent and failing miserably. But I'm such a pushover that she frequently gets to keep it.

Because Cipher is the queen.