As I sit here, Mufasa is curled up on his tower and Turbo has forced my laptop to become a one-knee-top because he has claimed the other one. Mufasa is audibly snoring. Turbo has the hiccups. I didn’t even know cats got the hiccups, but it’s so incredibly cute and so incredibly distracting.
But it’s not actually an impediment to my work. Though Turbo’s adorable, malfunctioning diaphragm is making me smile every couple of seconds, it’s actually very comforting to have his weight on (half of) my lap. I’m the kind of person who flicks from tab to tab as I work, following group chats and social media updates and getting pulled into research holes, made much worse by the fact that I can’t seem to help but have three documents of things I’m writing open, completely unrelated to each other. You know, because the most effective way to work is by writing a sentence in one window, then the next, then the next—no, it really isn’t. And sometimes I only write half a sentence. My ADHD is medicated, I swear.
But Turbo’s a calming presence. He helps me feel grounded, like I can afford to leave the little red circle on Discord there without checking it. Like I can stick with one tab, because I don’t actually need to double check what hiccups are.
Of course, for all he’s helping right now (purrs have replaced the hiccups and this is even better!), I know that it’s only a matter of time before Mufasa decides that he’s not getting enough attention and walks across my keyboard. It might not happen today, but it’s coming. I am entirely unprepared.