A Helping Paw

I have three cats who keep me company...let me rephrase that...My three cats have a human who keeps them company.
Splat, Pandamonium and Furball. Two females and one male (who's a bit of a wuss, but don't mention that to him as he thinks he's the he-man of the house :-) ). There's a picture of each of them on my website.
When I write each of them have their own way of helping me out (or should that read annoy and distract me???).
Furball likes to perch himself on top of the stack of plastic crates near my office desk. From there he supervises all that happens in the office, including watching me write. It's a great pozzie - the split cycle A/C blows right over this spot, so in winter he's warm, in summer he's cool. Smart boy.
He leaps onto my desk from that vantage point and he tends to do that right in the middle of an action scene. It's almost as if the rapid click-clack of my typing has attracted his interest and he's come to see where I'm up to. Most times he just sits beside the lap top and watches the cursor move across the screen and once he's checked out the scene (aka had enough) he returns to his post.
Panda floats through the office, a bit like a black and white ghost, reminding me with her plaintive miaows that a) the food dish is empty, b) it's dinner time, c) she wants to go out - NOW or d) it's time to pay attention to her not the square screen in front of me.
You know she's really serious when she jumps up on the desk, walks in front of the screen and slaps you in your face with her tail. She tends to be the more ambivalent one of the three when it comes to writing. Plot and character come second to all of the above.
Splat is my furry protege. Out of all the felines I've owned she's the one who loves the laptop and shares her ideas on where the story should head. She spends a lot of her time on the office desk - lying beside the keyboard, walking across the keyboard, sitting near the laptop, walking across the keyboard, rubbing her head on the corner of the screen (she's doing that right now), walking in front of the screen (she's also doing that right now), sitting in front of the screen, walking across the keyboard, tapping the screen with a paw, walking across the keyboard...
I think you get the idea.
Some of you might think she's only doing it to get my attention. 5% of the time you might be right but, I'm sure other cat owners will agree when I say she's actually pointing out irrelevant flashback narratives and questioning the plausibility of a character's motives. She's an author's cat, after all!
Don't be surprised if you see me mention my furry friends on the dedication page of one of my books once I publish - they've all lent a helping paw to shape my stories. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Photo: Furball, & a typical cat-like pose for the camera.