Tweak: “What are you doing?”

Me: “I’m rolling up my yoga mat.”

Tweak is sitting on tuffet in a Meatloaf Pose, a motionless lump of judgmental peace.

Tweak: “It looks like a burrito. What do you fill it with?”

Me: “Sweat. Hope. Spandex.”

Tweak arches her back into a perfect C-shape, then flops on her side. She bends her head downward over the edge of the tuffet and licks one paw.

Tweak: “What is this ‘yoga’?”

Me: “It’s a Sanskrit word that means ‘unity’ and also, ‘Those are really nice pants.’”

She flicks her tail once, twice, then stretches her hands out over her head extending her body to three times its normal length. Her vertebrae are taffy.

Tweak: “Why do you do yoga?”

Me: “Because gravity is a bitch, and I don’t want to be one.”

She twists her spine from neck to tail like someone unwrapping a caramel.

Tweak: “I don’t see the point.”

Tweak jumps off her tuffet, lands like Nadia Comaneci on the wood floor, and attempts to seduce my yoga mat by squirming her fur all over it.

Me: “No, I don’t suppose you would.”

Then she flounces down the hall for a nap. My yoga mat is now a Chia burrito.

Tweak: “Namaste, bitches.”

20 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak.”