And Apricot Falls Asleep

I am so excited.

You know how I said that the last trust issue was Apricot allowing himself to fall asleep next to or on me? A deep sleep, and not just a cat nap.

He did it! Today, and not months from now! I am excited about it but also astonished.

In honorable cat tradition, he also managed to do it right when I was thinking of getting up and getting a drink of water for myself. So I got very thirsty.

Here's how it happened.

Yesterday he came and curled up beside me on the settee while I was typing on the computer. He purred, and yes it was absolutely lovely, but he didn't sleep. Up until now, he's never fallen completely asleep when he was that close to me.

Today, early this afternoon, I was playing with my phone while sitting on the settee, with the blanket across my legs the same way it was last night. Apricot climbs up onto the settee and makes his way across me. He gave my legs an experimental tramp or two, and even sat down for a moment, but in the end decided they really weren't solid enough to sleep on. (Skin shifts under cat paw weight, and I imagine for a cat who wasn't raised with humans, it doesn't feel safe underfoot, rather the way we object to earthquakes.)

Headed for sleep

So he settled in next to me again. He was the other way around this time, with his head down by my knees and his tail next to my hip. He was purring.

After a while his eyes closed and he relaxed. The purring continued for a little, but then it slowly faded and stopped. Cats don't purr when they are truly asleep. It's a conscious decision to purr, and although I suppose some cats might purr when asleep just like some humans talk in their sleep, most of them don't, and for the same reason most humans don't talk in their sleep.

He is out like a light!

He was all stretched out and fast asleep. I had picked up a book to read at the beginning, since when he jumped up I'd actually just finished what I was doing with the phone. He stayed asleep for about half an hour, judging by how many pages I read before he woke up.

Even after he woke up he stayed there for a while. And then he got up and turned around and lay down again, this time up against my side so his head rested against my ribs and the rest of him continued on down to the settee seat, using me as a backrest, sort of. (More of a side rest, but you get the idea, I hope.)

Propped up like this. My hand was resting
on his hip but I took it off for the photo
so you could (a) see him and (b) see that
it's obvious that I'm not keeping him there.

Finally he did leave, after maybe an hour all told, which is the longest he's ever stayed continuously close to me. And he left more because he was getting hot than anything else. I know because my hand which was resting on his hip was also getting hot.

And the icing to the cake for all this was that unlike yesterday, this time the phone was free and I could take pictures! I guess you figured that out already ...