Technically the bed belongs to the spousal unit and I.

However, our little black cat Zo� did not get that memo and her attitude is that it is HER bed, a bed that she has generously agreed to share with us.

This fuzzy noblesse oblige is extended to us for those periods when her 22 1/2 hours of badly needed sleep overlap with the eight or so hours the spousal unit and I occupy the bed.

Mostly, this works out well. It's very soothing falling asleep with something warm and fuzzy purring beside you. Not that the spousal unit isn't warm and fuzzy, but really, he's just never mastered purring.

Saturdays are laundry days here and so when I get out of bed I strip off the sheets and toss them in the machine on my way past towards the kitchen.

A bare mattress on our bed perturbs Zo� no end. She Has Strict Standards Regarding Her Bed and one of those standards is that it should be made up when she sleeps on it. Since the cats eat their breakfast when we eat our breakfast, there usually isn't much bed-related criticism during the meal.

However, if I don't go directly upstairs right after I eat and get some fresh sheets on the bed, then one very upset little black cat sits on the floor beside said bed and begins to berate me. In her mind a bare mattress is beneath contempt. HER bed should be covered with sheets and a bedspread. Anything less is a slap across the face.

Now you might think that a creature that small would be easy to ignore, but if you did, you would be very, very wrong. This cat is capable of serious decibels. And it's not the volume of it alone, it's the cadence. She yowls a sort of aria, which I think of as the "Marn's Inhumanity To Cat Song".

You really can't appreciate how this song can get on your very last nerve until you've heard it looping for a few minutes.

Which it did this morning.

Oh, I had lots of chores on my list for today, and frankly making the bed was not on the top of that list. But even you know what? Making the bed swiftly became number one about two minutes into the Marn's Inhumanity To Cat Song.

Forget doing the dishes, washing the floor, changing the kitty litter, doing the laundry and filling the wood box. The very first thing I did this morning after I ate my breakfast was to go upstairs and make my bed.

This morning, as I made the bed for the cat who watched my every move with her little beady green eyes, I realized the truth about myself.

I stand before you a broken woman, utterly dominated by a few pounds' worth of small black cat.