He has me well-trained. I hear him walking into the room now and wake. Sometimes he’ll sound a short double miaow, like a car alarm being armed. I reach out sideways from the bed and his head bumps up into my hand. Purring. I know that this is just the prelude.
The miaowing starts.
It is four thirty in the morning. It has only just started to brighten outside.
I’m lying here now, a man in his early forties so of course I need to pee, but if I get up, he has won again because I’ll have to put his collar on, unlock the cat flap, feed him. So I lie there needing to pee, with him miaowing and me pretending to be asleep.
If I lie here much longer he’ll jump up on the bed. He’s developed a technique for doing this that’s not unlike an Oompa Loompa delivering CPR. Six kilos of cat landing on your sternum really wakes you up.
Eventually, I crack. Of course I do. He, having won, sprints downstairs and waits for me to put his collar on, unlock the cat flap and feed him.
So now it’s five thirty, he comes back in having soiled the back garden and stared at a frog, and goes back upstairs and to sleep.
I can’t, of course. Because it’s light and it’s five thirty and I have All The Thoughts in my head.
Some people like to blog about how getting an early start is great. You can get your best work done, blah blah blah. I bet they’re cat owners just looking for a coping mechanism.
You describe my life perfectly. No chance of a quickly waking up and then going back to sleep. Once I wake – I am at Pushkin’s back and call.
We need some kind of support network. And possibly a good cattery.
I am Mia,I have my slaves! xx