Podium

"That's twice today my cat's got right under my feet and I've had to catch myself as if I were a falling vase..."

To which I got a tongue in cheek reply...

"Since when did a vase gain the skill of catching itself whilst falling?"

Well....

Imagine both my head and torso as the vase, my legs as the podium it sits upon. My arms quite naturally are my balance extending to my fingertips, where so much as adding muscular tension through my arm, to the knuckles of my thumb and four fingers could keep me stable. In the situation where my podium starts to wobble as a reaction to an unexpected feline tickling below my knees and around my ankles, my arms counteract to prevent the vase from falling thus keeping it intact. To catch oneself involves extending outwards, physically reaching out at the air to keep the vase from falling using a combination of arms, legs feet and hands, predominantly my podium and balance as well as coordination with the very top of the vase. Once the feline had dispersed and my feet had resumed the right placement, it was safe to adjust myself accordingly and remove any embarrassment which may have encountered from memory.

This analogy starts to fail once the vase smashes completely, when an accurate comparison would mean that I would be at the least "shattered" or more seriously, "blown up" or "dead", when actually I would have just fallen to the floor.

If you hear a yelp or meow, you've probably stood on a cat.