The XYZ Affair

I have an algebraic---or perhaps physics---problem to present to you, hoping for a solution but surmising there is none:

Let X = a gray female cat (spayed) who weighs about 10 pounds.

Let Y = an orange-and-white male cat (neutered)who weighs about the same.

Let Z = a human female of a certain age who weighs approximately seven times the combined weight of X and Y.

Let Z's double bed = Z's double bed.

If X sleeps on one side of Z and Y sleeps on the other, why can't Z turn over or otherwise change position during the night, and why does Z have continuing nightmares of being immobilized in leg irons?

Remember Gulliver's voyage to Lilliput, on which he awakes from a deep sleep to find himself tied and pegged to the ground, unable to move? Sleeping with two cats is exactly like that.

It is also like the law of physics that states something-or-other will always rush to fill a vacuum, as I know from rising to go to the bathroom and returning to find two average-sized cats have spread to fill the entire center of the bed. No lie: the exact and entire center. They must have GPS. Or the world's biggest sense of entitlement.

Moreover, I have to let sleeping cats lie; somehow their respective ten pounds becomes a hundred. Each. There must be a law of physics that explains that, too, but I have no idea what it is. Funnily enough, before I put aside my book and turn out the light, they occupy modest little nests down near the foot of the bed. I hardly notice they're there.

Short of moving to another room and barricading the door, I don't know quite what to do about these feline night riders. If you have a suggestion (short of exorcism), please let me know. My back and my hip joints are killing me!

***

This tickled me...

From "Introduction to Poetry" by a personal favorite and New York State's Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, who is describing his classes at NYU:

"...I want them to water ski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on shore.

"But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it."

May you treat the poems that come your way with the joy they deserve!