There are cat people, crazy cat ladies and Catwoman, I maybe all three. I love Hello Kitty. Not enough to get a Hello Kitty tattoo, even in a hidden place. (Ouch)

But maybe enough to get a Hello Kitty manicure, done in a cute tasteful way and I might be amused by something Hello Kitty edible.

I’ve always had a cat, from the time I was a small child. I’m a Leo, more precisely with eight planets in Leo. I sometimes really feel like a cat, tactile, languid, yet coy. And although I can’t actually purr – I do in my mind when I’m just the right kinda cozy.

I’ve had some very special cats. Magpie, originally Maggie when she/he was a tiny kitten until I brought her/him to the vet for the first time and he said, “Maggie is a boy.” I came home in a tizzy until the internet told me that there are black and white birds called “Magpie.” Since my cat was black and white, it seemed fitting.

Magpie was a sort of dog-cat, as I’m sort of a cat-human. Once when we had a new cleaning lady who he apparently did not like folding clothes on the dining room table, he jumped up on the pile of clothes, threw them on the ground and scratched the hell out of her. Gloria never came back. “Mag” was a 16 lb. beast. He loved me a lot and often crawled up on my chest ‘til we were nose to nose. His shear weight was a force. He would lie on my husband’s back lulling him into a deep profound sleep – way better than any heating pad. We still talk of the day Magpie died, letting out one last hissing roar to the world and then gone.

We now have Sophie, another tuxedo cat that is scrumptiously cute and meows incessantly. She has things to say. And if you scratch her butt in just the right spot, she howls. She is the softest, cleanest, most intimate cuddle bunny I’ve ever known. She insists on going under the covers, curling herself into a ball up against me while kneading my right side with her claws – purring as I rub her soft belly.

She’s much like the baby I never had and she will never grow out of that Mommy-I-love-you child into the Mommy-I-hate-you teen. Although, her “Mraouuw” often sounds like “Maaaahh” – the shriek of a p.m.s.ing adolescent. I’d say she thinks we’re related by blood and perhaps that I borned her.  She’s let me know she trusts me with her life. Very un cat-like. Even I don’t do that. As I said, very un cat-like.

Today I counted fifteen places in our home that she sleeps or hides out, in order to be left alone to lounge. Each place has a soft pillow or folded towel for her to curl up on, when she can’t be bothered with the world. I want that. I want to crawl into the linen closet and sleep in a ball on an oversized beach towel or inside the dark closet on a soft cat bed or on the carpet under the bedroom window behind the curtain so no one can find me. “Leave me alone, I’m busy, napping. Meow. Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”