My Brittney Spaniel, Roxy, isn’t a licker. She’s a nuzzler, able to get between my arm and side no matter how hard I try to keep her away, but she doesn’t lick much.
Roy, my excessively large neutered male cat is another story. He licks. First thing in the morning, when my husband lets him in, he jumps on the bed and turns it into an Insta-massager with his purring. Ignoring him infers permission to turn my legs into a kind of cat body pillow, with Roy draped across them.
He gets out of bed with me and follows me to the bathroom. Same ritual every morning. While I peer at myself in the mirror (Do I really look like that?) he wraps his enormous body around my legs in a figure eight, not unlike handcuffs…er…footcuffs. Then he starts to lick the back of my legs.
It is disturbing on a couple of levels. I mean, it is uncomfortable; raspy and sharp. And there’s the species problem: Cats don’t lick. Cats are supposed to be stand-offish. Every cat I’ve had would rather have eaten tomatos than shown overt affection. For Roy, however, licking the backs of my legs isn’t enough.
Once the contact are in, the teeth are scraped, the face is washed and some kind of semi-clean clothing is slung on, I drink coffee and read the internet until I wake up. Roy takes this opportunity to jump on my desk and, if he can get away with it, lick my face. For me, this is too much.
I’m not sure if he’s some kind of genetic mutant, maybe a cat crossed with a black lab, or maybe he’s tasting me against the day that his food bowl stays empty despite all of his complaints and he is forced to eat me. Either way it creeps me out. Every single morning.