Clinging to the Edge of Life’s Pillow

Miss Bailey, up close & personal

Woke up this morning clinging to the edge of my pillow, having been nudged off dead center sometime in the wee hours by the 6.5-pound cat, Miss Bailey, who shares my bed.

Miss Bailey is about the size of a relatively small newborn child. I was just over six pounds myself when I was born. So it’s hard to understand how she can dominate the bed. But she does.  

It starts because she wants to sleep on my face. She climbs up, drapes herself across my cheek, mouth and nose, then settles in with a sound of contentment halfway between a robust purr and a delicate snore. I, myself halfway between sleep and wake, adjust to avoid a mouthful of fur. Miss Bailey snuggles closer, sometimes reaching for my cheek with a soft paw. The push-pull continues and soon it’s 6 a.m. and I wake up to find Miss Bailey enthroned on the center of the pillow, body curled around the top of my head.

This is not, I think, an isolated event in my life.

I invite people into my life. They want to get closer. I want to avoid the messiness of fur up my nose and down my throat. So I try to edge imperceptibly away, without sending them flying off to some other room, some other soft spot. They sense my distance and reach for me. I resist, withdraw. We are beyond negotiating a healthy give-and-take, caught as we are in that dreamy state of near-sleep where all we want is what we want. I wake up resentful. Miss Bailey, like so many others, wakes up alone and feeling rejected.

And so it goes. Unless, as I did this morning, I take Miss Bailey in my arms, lie back on my pillow and pull Miss Bailey to my chest so we can finish our sleep, heart to heart.

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