Okay. I get up early on a Saturday morning, because my cats are already getting a little insistent. It’s been seven hours since they last ate, and why am I bothering trying to sleep? Get up and feed me!
Photo by Mikhail Vasilyev on Unsplash
I have to or they’ll get worked up and start an endless cycle of vomiting, usually preceded by loud wails and howling.
Okay, bleary eyed I stumble downstairs, and get out paper plates and open a can of some disgusting mixture “minced turkey in gravy with chunks.”
Ugh. The smell of it opens my eyes. Now my cats are frantic.
Give one of them the food on the counter. We have to do that, because the other two are like sharks, circling my legs, and they’ll take the food away from him in a heartbeat. I walk into the living room with two more plates. Lately, the Russian Blue’s have discovered a new game. It’s called “Let’s stop in our tracks, and see if we can kill daddy by tripping him.” I avoid that, think about soccer, and avoid that impulse. Set the plate on the floor.
Go in and make my coffee. I’m alive now. Barely.
My Burmese wants another can. Since he seems to just burn off six pounds of catfood a minute, I give him another can. You can’t add to his plate while he’s eating or he’ll run away.
You can’t face him while walking around, or he’ll run away. So I have to shuffle sideways in my kitchen, my back to him. If my neighbors can see me through the blinds, they must think I’m an idiot.
Try to give the Russian Blue’s a little extra food, since the Burmese got a little. One of them is now terrified, and goes to hide. The other rushes to his food to eat it while the first one cowers in terror, because I’m breathing, and that’s apparently terrifying to Russian Blues.
Go upstairs with my coffee. Get the laptop turned on so I can write blog articles and twitter tweets.
The Burmese uses the litter box, with six hours of kicking the litter around, followed by another six hours of him scraping his paws on the plastic sides of the litter box.
Now he takes off like a race car driver, running up and down the stairs. That’s cute at 5 pm. That’s horrible at 5:50 AM. Especially because he’s gobbling like the minced turkey he just ate.
My wife is still asleep, or was before he began gobbling. So now I’m hissing his name and trying to get him to shut up and stop making so much noise, so my wife can try to get a little sleep. And in the process, I’m probably making more noise than the Burmese.
When he runs downstairs, I end up turning blue. Usually because I’m holding my breath, waiting to hear something crash and shatter, the usual sound that follows the frantic galloping he does. No crash, no smell of smoke, so he hasn’t caused catastrophe yet.
After fifteen minutes of loud galloping and gobbling, he’s back in the litterbox, kicking then scratching. Satisfied, he trots into my office and jumps up into a kitty bed obviously not sized for a Burmese, but we’d gotten in when he was a kitten. He curls up, grabs his tail and goes to sleep.
I haven’t heard the Russian blues doing anything for a while. I’m too afraid to see what they’re ruining.
Cats are like children.
