Sweet kitten love.

she is obsessed with my sweat

My husband and I adore this kitten.

And she adores the one person she was intended for: our middle child. (Which is fitting as she was a 12th birthday gift for that daughter.)

We don’t begrudge our daughter her kitten’s affection. But we do wonder if she’ll ever have room in her heart for a few more human relationships someday. In the meantime, we enjoy watching her cuddle up next to her preferred human.

Weirdly, though, she’s got a thing for my running clothes.

Specifically the ones I’ve *just* worked out in: sweaty, stinky, maybe still damp…the ones that I leave on the floor just outside our master bath each day. 

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One of the side effects of a running life, especially one lived in the south, is a complicated laundry process.

I recall a few years ago a discussion my husband and I had outside with neighbors about how we deal with our sweat-saturated workout clothes—the consensus seemed to be that the trouble lies in either doing a sports-clothes-load almost every day, or in having the right spaces to dry them out. Post workout attire in Austin isn’t going to dry efficiently in a pile, and when you keep adding to the pile with more wet workout gear, matters are hardly helped.

Full disclosure—our actual laundry situation isn’t quite as vibrant as my drawing.

Patrick and I have tweaked our process over the years, but generally we limit our sports loads (yes, sports loads are done separately from street clothes in our house) to one a week. Unless we have an event or key workout planned that we *need* a particular or favorite piece of kit for, we have enough workout garments to hold out that long. And with each of us sweating through between five and seven outfits a week, there are plenty of clothes to warrant a whole load with at least that frequency. That basket gets filled at a higher rate than our other baskets!

But we can’t just toss our sweaty gear directly into that basket without drying it first…so solutions range from draping it over patio furniture—in my husband’s case, often after manually wringing it out over the back lawn—to hanging or laying it flat inside the house. If there’s room, and it’s not too wet or too large, parts of our workout gear gets draped on the sides of the intended basket. More often than not, some of Patrick’s gets hung in the laundry room, while most of mine ends up flat on the floor of our master bedroom. Maybe on the carpet, maybe across my workout mat. Once it’s dry, I scoop it up and add it to the basket. 

Not pretty, but effective.

None of these solutions will get our home a featured spread (or even a mention) in Better Homes and Gardens. (Which I admit makes my artist soul a little sad. I’m a sucker for a pretty, well staged interior.) 

But it does get the attention of the aforementioned, adorable—if not standoffish—sweet kitten.

Sometimes I’m in the room. I get to watch her from a safe distance while she sidles on up, dips her head down for the first sniff, then lowers her whole self in for the face rubs, kneading, and full-on-lay-down with my running kit. Of course I’d prefer she approached me, rather than my stinky clothes with this kind of curiosity and affection, but it’s strangely captivating to witness all the same. 

I captured video footage once. But I deleted it. While entertaining, the effect wasn’t altogether flattering. (I may or may not have provided audio for the encounter.) While I aim to inspire, I’m not altogether sure that I’m okay with my daughter’s kitten being portrayed as anything less than wholesome on the world-wide-web.

I did manage to capture and keep a still image one day before my actual, physical presence scared her away.

I hold hope that my post workout essence will help to bridge the gap from my laundry to my flesh, and I *have* tried to lure her in while still in my sweaty state post workout, but to no positive impact—yet.

In the meantime, my heart is warmed when I walk by my drying clothes and spy them askew, her soft white kitten fur left in evidence of her affection.