A lost page from How to Be Your Own Cat.

Here's an intriguing choice, inspired by one Eartha Kitty, who would plop herself atop whatever random objects happened to lying on the desktop that day (including pointy, lumpy, hard, and otherwise "uncomfortable" objects: a stapler, scissors, a tape dispenser, a box of paper clips, a quartz crystal).  We might posit two possibilities:

A. Eartha Kitty had an instinct to mark her territory, so it was her duty to bodily lie atop foreign elements until such time as her claim was legitimized, however painful that process proved itself to be.  She endured the ordeals of her work without complaint and then left when she knew it was time to leave.  To be clear, the irregular landscape of objects she laid upon could in no way have been comfortable for her.  A comfy bed was available nearby, and any creature would surely know the difference.  She quietly suffered an unpleasant trial because her dominion was inseparable from her greater well-being.

B. When Eartha Kitty encountered a new set of circumstances in her world, without hesitation she collapsed upon the ragged terrain and physically experienced the contours, ever-mindful of the pokes and prods.  Like so much Braille, she "read" the objects.  Before reacting to the new set of circumstances, she literally slept on it.  It was a twist on the old idiom, "You made your bed, now lie in it"; someone else made her bed, but she laid on it just the same.  Upon truly facing, contacting, and coming up against the foreign elements, upon participating in their exact placement, upon gaining an awareness of the nature of their existence and contextualizing them into herself, Eartha Kitty would rise and go on with her day.

Do either A or B.

[Our illustration is from More Tuck-Me-In Stories, written and illustrated by Enos B. Comstock, 1922.]

A crooked cat from The See and Say Series, Book Two by Sarah Louise Arnold, 1914.

From Marci Actii Plauti, Comoedia, 1518.

From Kladderadatsch, 1935.

From Mocca, 1934.

"When the cat's away, the mice will play."  An illustration by Eugene Zimmerman for Puck magazine.

"Rare fun," from an ad for Aunt Sally baking powder, c. 1890 .