who only by moving can balance

[A spotted Bengal cat sits smugly in the middle of an approximately brown beanbag in front of a laptop.]

This. Is the spotted murderbeast. Or the hellbeast. Or That Dreadful Cat. Or, frequently, that fucking cat.

She owns two of my partners.

Here is an illustrative anecdote about why I refer to her this way:

I was lying in bed without glasses on. She jumped onto the bed next to my feet, walked up to my head, sniffed my nose for a few seconds in the way that cats do, then withdrew just enough to make a speculative but very directed swipe at one of my eyes, with claws extended, to see what happened.

... she got kicked out of the room

... and sulked about it

... VERY LOUDLY

And here is another, from this weekend:

We have reached an uneasy truce consisting of (1) timeshare and (2) pretending to hate each other. Unfortunately somewhere along the line we seem to have inadvertently become fond - as far as I can tell, we are both baffled by this - and turn out to miss one another if I don't visit in a while. She woke me up at 4.30am on Sunday morning by speculatively attempting to shred one of my favourite shirts; I told her "no" without even getting out of bed & she stopped. This constitutes a Great Victory, because (1) she actually very obviously waited to see if it was a thing I was okay with her doing, and (2) THIS TIME IT WASN'T MY LITERAL EYES.