Cats and knitting

I don't knit much around Yoda -- he lives in my bedroom because fur bearing mammals tend to shed and someone I live with has problems with that -- and I spend most of the day in 'my' room where my computer and yarntainer are located. I do visit frequently through the day, and sit with him for an hour or two here and there, but usually I just read or irritate Yoda by petting him a lot. But yestereve I was very tired (exhausted, really) because of a variety of unrelated issues that conspired to really, really irritate me. So after dinner, which ended around 9 pm, I came home, changed my shoes to my slippers, grabbed my yarn and book and went up to bed early. I cast on and knit the first row for the second blanket square of the month, then went to sleep early.

Despite this, I still got up later than usual this morning. I must have needed the sleep.

Any way, I got a lot of help with my blanket square:

Yoda is big on needle management.

He also helps me tension my yarn. And get it nice and moist -- I think he believes it helps the yarn slide through my fingers better. Bleargh.

It was adorable, though. Usually when I go up there, he comes over for a few seconds of dedicated snorgles, bites me and then goes off to be about his business. But last night he must have known I was a few watts short of a battery charge, because he just sat near or on me until I fell asleep.

He does that a lot, you know. When I first came down hard on this cold -- the second night I had it -- instead of demanding I stay awake for fifteen minutes petting him and rubbing his ears (as he is wont to do) he just laid down with his head lying on my hand and a paw on my arm as if he was hugging me. There was an incident once when I was really in a taking and crying up a storm on my pillow, and it threw him into such a state -- circling my head, mewling softly and stroking my face with his paw -- before he finally just lay down right up against my stomach, making biscuits on my arm and rubbing his nose against my chin until I stopped crying from the sheer Power of Cute pouring off him. I guess even boy kitties can't handle a woman's tears all that well.

He's awful sweet. You know, for a kitty.