Sometimes you can’t help but be amazed by the awesome superpowers possessed by cats. Let’s take their uncanny ability to detect the maximally inconvenient location in which to place themselves, shall we? Mr. Bsag tends to come to bed a little later than me, since I’m a lark and he’s an owl, so while I get ready for bed, I usually have the bedroom to myself. Well, not quite to myself, because the cats tend to join me, particularly Bella. What usually happens is that I turn a corner of the duvet back on my side of the bed (ready for me to get into bed), then turn away from the bed to hang a few clothes in the wardrobe. Inevitably, what I’m greeted with when I turn back to the bed moments later is Bella, sitting with her paws tucked comfortably underneath her, squarely and neatly in the middle of the turned-over corner of duvet.

This, I am fairly sure, is mathematically the Location of Maximum Inconvenience (or, LMI) on the bed. Imagine the surface of the bed as a 2D contour plot, shaded using a kind of heatmap indicating how inconvenient it would be (for the human occupant, i.e. me) to have a cat placed at that location. Less inconvenient areas would be shaded a cool blue (such as the entire side of the bed that belongs to Mr. Bsag), while the Inconvenience Hotspots would be bright red. The hottest and reddest spot would be that little triangle of folded over duvet, and Bella homes in on it like an inconvenience-seeking missile.

I think she likes this spot so much because not only is it maximally inconvenient for me, but also maximally comfortable for her, because it consists of not one but two thicknesses of lovely squashy duvet. When I turn back from the wardrobe and see her there, and address her with a weary, “Bella!”, she looks at me with her most innocent “What?” expression, and a kind of limpet-like tenacity that Occupy Movement protestors could learn a great deal from. In my more charitable moments, I try to see this daily battle of wills in a more positive light. Some fancy hotels leave a little chocolate on your pillow when they make the room up, I have a cat adorning the corner of my duvet.