Cats: the unthinking woman's alarm clock
Normally, the lengthening of the days is cause for much joy, over at Chez Scroobious. Normally, my heart lightens with the morning. Normally, it’s a pleasure and a delight to wake to grey skies rather than darkness, to have birdsong slowly filter into my dreams and nudge me out of sleep.
Well, I say “normally”. What I mean is “in the days before cats”.
Harvey, you see, he also wakes up earlier now. And because he’s on a Special New Diet that will make Jemima sick if she eats from his bowl, I have to feed the little darlings at actual mealtimes, rather than just leaving big piles o’ crunchies out for them. So you see where this is going.
My alarm is set for 7.30. Harvey’s stomach is set for 7.00. So instead of waking up gently to melodious birdsong, lightening skies etc, I wake up to:
pounce!
pawpawpawpaw
“miaaaaaau?”
runrunrun
[Hang on. She’s not following me.]
Pounce!
pawpawpawpaw
“miaaAAUu?”
Runrunrun
[Um, no, she hasn’t quite got it yet.]
POUNCE!
PAWPAWPAWPAW!
“don’t you love me at AAALLL?”
While I, of course, am hunkering down defiantly, thinking: Will. Not. Give. In. Because I have thirty minutes left to pretend to sleep, and it’s quite enough that Jemima got me up at 3am to let her out, so if I let Harvey dictate what time I wake up – well, I’ll just be completely pussywhipped, won’t I?
Back when we first adopted Harvey, he was all scrawny and miserable. Hardly moved, just sat around looking put upon. But a few weeks of decent food sorted him right out and suddenly he’s got all this energy. Which he expends in being demanding. Maybe we made a misstep there…
2 comments:
The furry one, who is the mistress of the art of pawing open doors, has just discovered that the door to my built-in wardrobe doesn't shut properly. This means that on any day that I don't arise and feed her by 6.30 am, she can paw the door open, jump from the floor to the top of the chest of drawers to the high-up top-of-wardrobe shelf, and launch herself across the 2-3 metre gap to the bed, making her trademark rising "Purrrrrruhhhh" sound (she must have been Xena in a previous life). She usually hits the (sleeping) me in the chest like a hairy 4 kilogram cannonball.
And you reckon you've got problems, Scroob. Trade you for an early morning feline Heimlich manouevre? ;-)
Wow. Such cunning can only be met with awe.
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