Feline Fascia

2.29.20

I JUST FIGURED IT OUT.

Like all cats, mine loves to join me at the desk. If I’m working at the computer, she’s almost always nearby.

Sometimes REALLY nearby.

As I type this, she has her little cat butt snugged up against the “return” side of the keyboard and her tail is just barely twitching as it lies across the number keys. I can’t hit the delete button without getting her right at the base of her tail, which would annoy the hell out of me, but she seems to like it.

But her really, truly favorite place to lie is across my forearms.

I’ve developed great wrist muscles because so often I’m typing with a large cat holding my hands to the desk.

Why don’t you throw her off?, you ask. Why indeed. She LOVES to be thrown off; it makes her rush back to me with even louder purrs. Do it again! Do it again! I’m just going to lie right here…

She’s fully capable of stretching out over both arms. She LOVES stretching out over both arms. If I should lift one arm – say, to scratch my nose because some random cat hair is floating on the air and tickling me – she remains draped over my arm like a large, warm, purring dead thing. She hangs there until I lower my arm again, at which point she lifts her head just enough to not be smacked into the desk.

It looks HORRIBLY uncomfortable, and yet she’ll lie there for hours.

HOURS.

And just this evening it occurred to me what she was doing.

Like me at myofascial stretch class – draped unwillingly over a foam roller and very definitely not purring – my cat is loosening fascial restrictions in her abdomen.

Ah. Now I understand.

I think cats must have very pliant fascia.

This is Selma. She is purring like an engine.