Yup. My Statler is a lap hog. Statler is the black kitten, turned big Tom cat we rescued back in September. We also took in his grey tiger brother Waldorf, Waldo for short, because my hubby lives saying, “Where’s Waldo?” When he gets home. They are named after the two little old men in the Muppets movies who sit in the balcony and heckle.
Anyways, Statler is the “I want affection, so I will ask for it aggressively” of the two. Every morning, correction, every meal, he jumps up into my lap for lap time. He’s adorably annoying. Waldorf isn’t so needy. He doesn’t ask for attention, but he wants it. This morning, Statler had done his lap time and vacated the spot in the middle of my bowl of oatmeal. Waldorf came up onto the chair next to me and began to stare. I am starting to learn to read his cues. I scooped him up for some lap time. Lap time to Statler is a full on curl up and go to sleep time. Lap time with Waldorf is more just letting him sit on your lap while he looks around and enjoys a bit of chin scratching. There he was, enjoying his time, when his brother had to come up and interrupt. It’s a good thing I have two legs, one for each cat. It only took a minute before Statler was turning around to lay down, basically shoving his brother off the other leg.
Lap hog. I am not sure why, but it is these moments in life that cause me to get introspective. I found myself praying in my head that I am not a lap, or attention hog when I am with others. I want to allow others to find joy in sharing stories during conversation, instead of dominating conversations with my own stories. Then I found myself pondering that being a lap hog with my Heavenly Father might be a good thing. That it brings joy to him that I would desire to be close to him, in the shelter of his arms. He loves me, more than I love my cats. I’m not sure where I am going with this analogy, just pondering life.
As I finish writing this, and getting ready to remove the warm lap hog from my lap, I hope that today you can find “a lap” where you can find a few moments of peace and the feeling of security. For me, that will be my afternoon twenty minute thanking God for his blessings siesta. We all need some lap hogging in this crazy, chaotic world we are living in today.
An Ordinary Life 