About a month ago, I bought a pillow. Little did I know, I bought a pillow for Aeris. She has completely taken it over, especially at night. Her nighttime routine used to involve her snuggling up between Matt and I for a little while before relocating to a more comfortable location. But now that pillow is the more comfortable location, and she will stay there as long as she can stand being at the mercy of two sleeping humans.

Last night as she was curled up, purring softly, I thought back to her kittenhood, and chuckled. When she was a kitten, she was a handful. She is the reason people advise getting two kittens, because they will keep each other busy. If there was trouble to be found, Aeris would find it. If there was no trouble to be found, Aeris may create it. Plus, there was a westie around at the time who had lived with cats, yes, but never a tiny kitten. So, for the remnants of my sanity, I put Aeris in a cat crate every night at bedtime. It kept her safe, it kept me sane.

I don’t remember when the crate stopped working. It was in our third apartment, but that still was before Aeris was a year old. She caught on to the fact that she was the odd man out, and she didn’t like it. Crating her at night got more and more difficult. Finally, one morning, I heard a persistent thump coming from the next room. I hopped out of bed and went to check on Aeris. She had one paw sticking out of the front of the crate, and was somehow pulling herself across the room, crate and all. That was some determination, right there. I burst out laughing, and knew the jig was up. Crating her at night was no longer an option.

There have been a lot of nights since then that I’ve regretted that decision. For years, she would attach herself to the bottom of our mattress and climb across it like some feline obstacle course. She’s incredibly stubborn, and if she believes it’s time to get up, she makes it happen. She is going to cause as much chaos as she can summon until you bow to her will. While you’re not supposed to acknowledge a cat when they’re misbehaving, at a certain point, you have to dive to save the lamp, or the pop can from careening across the room. She knows.

But when she’s not chaotic evil, she is the sweetest, cuddliest, purriest little cat. She knows that she can burn the house down so long as she snuggles afterward…and so she does.

Thinking about how far she’s come, being locked in a crate at night to owning a good portion of the bed, made me chuckle. It’s 100% Aeris.