Imagine here a map: made of two sleeping cats. Napping, resting, cleaning up their act.

(A gentle paws here please, for preliminary dramatic effect)

Very few of all cat loving folk owned by cats, are aware of the fact that the soul purpose of the cat is to act as psychic buffer for their kin. So. This chat is of a cat nap, map of a cat nap, in fact. Have your peepers peeled, ears shining sharp, keep your nerves intact. Apply your thinking fascinator cap. To virtualise reality. Feel fascinated, be enlightened, by fervent feline fact. Let imagination steer the real and maybe think of your sweet cat. Notice here how act is an anagram of cat – an interesting juxtaposition considering the tumbling of letters required for such a playful interluding act: From the perspective of the cat. Cat also sits repositioned at the tail end of “fact” – so there’s the proof of that. As, after any burst of exercise, they’re happy just to nap. Sleeping seems indeed to be a rather passive act.

Yet it’s not. It’s mental consolidation, sorting dream from real, allowing stress to trip and slip, drip down neuronal nether tracts. Via the nervous system, to exit the body at predetermined pedal sole spots – by pact. For felines and human folk the process is compact: stress is sorted and dispersed along latent conducting lines. Feline ley lines. Lay lines, nerve lines never lie. They lilt down the distal dorsal. Passed the vague vagus. Through the thoracic, leaning lateral to the lumbar. Around the sacral plexus – sacred and perplexed. Down to be grounded and finally expelled where paw pads pat the pavement. Regenerative resting is essential for such purpose – and so a cat must nap. Yet. Active stress expiration isn’t just about the cat. Through their waking hours these psychic sponges soak both love and negativity, dealing tacitly with that. It’s not a lazy act: it’s real, this is fact. The process of transferral needs a kind and gentle touch, sincere as silk not polyester plastic. Cats are very tactile (see here cat is now reversed) one touch enough to generate the transfer, in a furry static, power charging, bifurcating dual fantastic double dipping soft-stroke-bursting kind of way. Whenever we unwind, feeling stressed or maybe kind and stroke our purring friend the energy is merged. Automatic. Telepathic. Psychomatic. Electrostatic. Once the purring starts the process can take play: with affection we keep patting, murmur words just for his ears, Puss knows full well the task is underway. Closing eyes in concentration, loving, luscious adoration – the strain is stretched and massaged. Made fluid, ethereal, energised until finally, it’s mindfully capped and battery stored away. The negative by-products are attracted back to earth, neutralised, core-stored (the magnetic cat in attract most purposefully sat) condensed there to remain, until our next untimely burst of negativity or pain. Puss knows. For now we feel refreshed – relieved, restored, renewed and lurvvved. If we continue tactile kindness positivity increases. Puss within his trance keeps sharing back his vibe. Storing some for later, passing back the rest. The job is almost done – but now exhausted, he needs slumber, and will do so anywhere at any time. Just a bit more concentration, then off to sleepy fields to that sunny spot just west of dosing stations. Sharing and transposing, bad vibe ridding, feline caring. Yep, it’s tiring.

Imagine here the Cat Map, territorial in nap – contained, restrained within invisible lines. See two sleeping slumber partners, lumbars curving yin and yang:  demarcated – along feline spatial zones. Each space is fair, each cat aware despite the dozing countenance, of limits and content to stretch, repose. Note the tail drop zone of one alone, the other tail tucked under. Outstretched paws, reflective snores and maybe they’re share-dreaming – twitching paws and whiskers deep in sleepful bursts. Each launching zone for cats un-prone is respected and time tested – as falling cats don’t always land paws-first.

The map shows Coco and Chilli, our condiment cat collective – pleased to cartograph for your example here. Their slumber zone is mappable yet really only cat-known to the precious moggies, deep within their curves. We can watch, respect, reflect – then retreat, to leave them share with us, their most, yes their most important work. Now take off your fascinator, thinking cap and ask yourself:

What kind of outlandish mess would the world be in, without the soaking up of all those bad vibes and stuff, as performed without complaining by our wondrous dozing friends?

Map of a Cat Nap by Wendi Bradshaw