I saw a very cute thing this morning that I had not really seen before: I saw Carbon fall asleep.

I’m ill at the moment (Fresher’s-Flu-come-early) so spent most of yesterday and this morning in bed. Carbon and Sili (and later Carla) volunteered for nursing duty. I was nursing Carbon too: along with his little sister, he’s having a skin allergy problem at the moment and his response to the itching is to lick and nibble constantly which damages his skin. While he sat with me, I tried my best to break his licking obsession. When he started licking, I put my hand between his head and the itchy body part; sometimes he’d lick my hand then stop licking, other times he would stop straight away and seemingly forget about the urge. I tended to leave my arm gently wrapped around him afterwards to stop him starting up again and this time, I had my arm over his shoulders with his upright head in the crook of my elbow and my hand under his chin.

We sat like that for a good few minutes. I wasn’t doing anything except resting so just watched my boy. I love looking at cats’ profiles at that close distance: down the whiskers so they’re just out of focus pin-pricks, to the curves of their face and the whurls of short fur on their noses. (This picture is of Carla, but you know, close enough). I watched Carbon, assuming him to be asleep and wished I was too. I also thought how I hadn’t really thought about the shape of a cat’s muzzle when I had drawn it in the past: too caught up in the human appearance, I had always drawn the nose sticking out further than it does – perhaps it’s because I have sniffy cats and their noses are always where they shouldn’t be.

Anyway, after a good few minutes of us lying together, Carbon’s head dropped down very slightly. He had been sat in a position best described as “relaxed Sphinx”: his body was relaxed but his head was bolt upright and his paws in front of him (under my hand). Now his chin had dropped into his chest slightly. A minute or so later, it dropped again. Shortly after that, I felt his chin touch my hand and then over the next minute or so, it leant further on my hand and then rolled over so the weight was on his cheek rather than chin. A minute or so later, I felt the twitching start and knowing that boy as I do, I can only assume he was dreaming about the frantic licking I was stopping him doing in real life. I hope he enjoyed it.