This is my day. Listen and tell me that I don’t have it hard. I’m up as soon as the light comes through the curtains. When it’s colder and the light comes later, I’m up even before the light. But they never get up too so I can’t go anywhere or do anything. I have to wait until a raucous noise comes from a box by the bed, usually accompanied by a handslap on plastic, a short period of silence, more noise, another handslap, silence again and eventually groaning when the noise comes for a third time. How can I sleep through that?
I’d like to get straight out when they’re finally up but they fuss and bother with water and cups and sometimes I have to sit on the sink for a full ten minutes. He goes out for an early smoke and he’s still too full of sleep to catch me as I streak through the open door. Sometimes it’s cold out there, or wet. That makes me think again and I have to stand and flick back and forth at the very tip of my tail until one choice pulls me harder. He will insist on trying to sway me at times like that and I wonder if he will ever learn I’m more likely to do the opposite of what he wants.
Once he’s gone back in he closes the door behind him at exactly the moment I was going to go in for breakfast. By then I’ve seen outside, sniffed what I need to sniff, had a stretch and a claw, so it’s time to go back inside. Mewling outside the door can sometimes take even longer to get a response than sitting on the sink, but I figure I can hold out much longer than he can. And sometimes she’d up by then and she gives in straight away.
She tickles my ears, which I grant you isn't much of a hardship, but then she stops. She always stops. If food is there I don’t mind but sometimes I have nothing to take my mind off how good it felt having her fingertips dig in around the base of my ear. On a good day I can get both of them to put food down if I eat quickly and that’s hard in itself because I get a bit bloated and windy then.
They both go off all day and leave me. I keep thinking it would be fun to pretend I’m in charge but I have a little sleep first and mostly it’s time for them to come home again when I wake up. One day I’ll try it, just to see what it’s like. I’m sure I’d leave my cat some company, good food and a way in and out so he wasn’t shut up all day.
After work is much like before work without the sense of urgency and with diminishing light. Once I eat I like to take a turn around the neighbourhood to see my friends. We catch up and race and eat stuff and sometimes we find little things to chase. When I catch something I usually take it back home for my people. I do worry they’ll never learn to hunt so I share mine with them. They must be much more confident because they are never grateful. She stands on a chair and he shoos it away with a brush, unless it’s the other kind of catch when he stands on a chair and she shoos it away.Then a few hours sleep because hunting is hard, maybe another tickle or a firm hand stroke and it’s bed time again.
So you aren’t telling me I don’t have a hard time are you? Imagine if you had to put up with that, every day of your life. That’s our lot and we’re expected to be grateful too.
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