In Which the Pirate Remembers Feline Friday.

The light was perfect, and Floyd was too sleepy to put up any objections to my pointing a camera at him.

While he doesn’t like having his picture taken, Floyd has become more affectionate in the past few months. A few nights ago he demanded my attention while I was washing up after dinner, meowing at me insistently until I got down to his level. Then he followed me upstairs, squawked his annoyance that I was taking so long with teeth-brushing and clothes-selecting, and immediately hopped up onto the bed with me when I climbed in. He made a nest of the blankets and was still there the next morning when I woke up.

Kipling is much more of a ham for the camera than Floyd is. He let me snap several dozen shots, all the while squiggling around into cuter and cuter positions.

Last night it was Kipling who slept next to me. I woke up in the middle of the night and found him there, upside-down, his face under my chin, purring like a motor. He reached both front paws out to grab my hand, and I fell asleep again in the midst of giving him a belly rub.

It’s good to be loved by cats.