We accuse our cat Tyrion of being a lot of different things. Sometimes, he acts like a baby and lets Lindsay hold him for inconceivably long periods of time. While at other times he displays the traits of a dog by fetching, a cat by sitting on laps and purring, or a bear by trying to drink water from the faucet with his paw just like a bear trying to catch salmon in a stream. The accusation of his being a bear isn’t that far off, since, after all, he is a Maine Coon and has some other bear-like tendencies, However, as often as he acts like a baby, dog, cat or, even a bear, there is one thing he acts like most often, and that is a hat.
Tyrion does a lot of cute things, and, dare I say, although I have been prone to hyperbole at times in the past, he might be the cutest cat ever. Of course, like any cat, he also does a lot of not so cute things, but those instances are not the focus of this story, and therefore unimportant at the present time. Anyway, back to the cuteness, which is very easy for Lindsay and me to capture since he is naturally photogenic, and almost always looks directly at the camera when his picture is being taken. Combine that with his handsome face, soft black fur and talkative nature, and you’ve got a pretty darn cute cat.
Tyrion is a little over two years old, and we’ve had him since he was barely 3-pounds and Lindsay could hold him in the palm of her hand. Of course, as a kitten, virtually everything he did was adorable and worthy of our “oohs” and “aahs,” but we assumed that as he got older, and larger, that his propensity for sitting in boxes, letting Lindsay hold him and curling up into a ball on her lap would subside, but they never did. I know that I thought for sure he would stop doing the single cutest thing; he started doing just after we got him, as soon as he grew up a little, but to this day his role as Lindsay’s sleeping hat remains in tact.
During one of the first nights that we had him he climbed onto Lindsay’s pillow and decided that sleeping there, right above her head, was an ideal spot to spend the night, and to be honest it looked particularly adorable because he was so small. As he got bigger (Maine Coon grown males are typically 15-25 pounds), he kept up his nightly ritual of climbing across me, and sleeping on the exposed, unused, pillow right above Lindsay’s head. Since I go to sleep after Lindsay I would see this sight unfold every night, and as he continued to grow he would take up more and more of the space not being used by Lindsay on her pillow.
When he crossed the 10-pound threshold he didn’t find a new comfortable spot on the couch or a chair, and when he turned one, and was no longer a kitten, he still kept right on sleeping virtually every night on her pillow. Now, he is around 15-pounds (thankfully his final size was on the very low-end of the adult male Maine Coon growth scale) and two years old, and still regularly does very cute things, but by far the cutest is how, virtually every night, he climbs onto Lindsay’s pillow and sleeps like he’s a hat resting atop her head.
Due to the size of his body he no longer gently rests just above Lindsay’s head like he did when he was a little baby kitten, and instead his arms and legs now hang next to the front and back of her face while his belly rests near the top of her head, but regardless it’s still adorable. Lindsay is usually sleeping when he enters our room and takes his spot on her pillow, but she often wakes up during the middle of the night to get more water, and, sure enough, when she looks at her pillow he’ll be there looking groggily back at her from being woken up in the middle of the night, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re a hat and the person underneath you starts to move.
