Luke is the clowder’s alpha. Being the alpha means he takes every opportunity to exploit every special spot in the house, special being defined by how much they each covet a particular spot. Recently the space between the base of my TV and the sound bar has become one of the most coveted spots in the house, primarily as a napping aid. Here we see Sir Luke napping to the left of me on the sound bar.

Here, he’s switched positions and is now napping to the right of me on the sound bar.

And to prove how popular a napping spot the space between the TV and the sound bar has become, we see Nicholas the Youngest napping to the right. Others in the clowder (it has six cats) may also nap there, I just haven’t caught them at it yet.

There are at least three problems with the cats napping on my sound bar:

1. They all shed like crazy, so I’m regularly pulling out my special vacuum and wand and constantly going over everything to pick up the hair. I have to really work on the sound bar because it’s covered in cloth. Looks stylish, but it’s a royal pain to keep clean with this crew.
2. Cats are not windows. Their fat little bodies cover the IR window at the base of the TV, meaning that when the humans want to watch TV with the remote control I have to get up and chase them off.
3. One morning I came out into the TV room and found the sound bar pushed off the normal position you see it now, and down onto the floor. Thankfully I still had an Orvis thick dog pad on the floor so that the dog pad cushioned the fall. The fall still disconnected the HDMI cabling as well as the power, so I had to reconnect everything and turn it all back on again. So how did the sound bar wind up on the floor? I suspect a brief but powerful wrestling contest between Luke and more than likely Nicholas, resulting in the sound bar being pushed off by all that thrashing cat mass.

*sigh*