The kitten who grew up with me adopted a brown bathmat the day I found her and brought her inside. She would knead and nurse on it, drooling madly, just as happy as can be. We called the mat her suck-rug, because that’s just fun to say. She eventually wore a big ol’ hole in the middle of it.

She never nursed on anything else, just the rug, wherever it was lying at the time (I confess I often kept it near me or in my room because she would usually sleep near or on it for part of the day).

We were best friends for eighteen beautiful years. She nursed on that rug until the day she died quietly in her sleep, and she was buried with it.

Here’s a picture, taken when she was about three. In my website link is a link to more pictures, and the only time I ever really wrote about her in my journal.

Shirley — but we called her Weed, because she was always where you didn’t want her, and she grew so fast — was one of those rare cats you only get a handful of times in a lifetime. I had many cats in my childhood, but she is the one who was my companion and friend, and she’s the one who had the patience to deal with a three-year-old child, even as a small kitten, and who taught me how to interact with cats and talk to them.

She was a great cat.

I certainly would not say they have not bonded; this is very happy behavior, but they can express it in different ways, as your two boys do. I’ve had cats who won’t knead my lap, but love to lie on the bed and poke their paws into my stomach; others who will sit on my lap, yet prefer to knead the armrest. It’s the setting that determines when they are most relaxed, and it’s the setting that will shape their response.