Saturday, April 19, 2008

Rise and Shine!


They say art imitates life, but this is just too much... Yes, this is how I wake up pretty much every morning - well maybe there are no baseball bats. You see, the problem is that our cats are all on diets these days. Tippy, Pumpkin and Gabriel are all getting on a bit (not that I would ever dare to say that to them!), and now that their primary hobbies include napping, moving to find some better sun, and then curling up in said sun for more napping, Eliza and I have had to put all three gentlemen on "slimming" diets.

They eat twice a day, at 8am and 8pm - not counting the food they steal from our Golden Retriever Willow, who is still enough of a puppy that her dish is always full (oh how the injustice of that burns our cats sense of superiority!). As far as I can tell, getting fed early has become the one great mission in life for all three of them. This isn't such a big deal in the evening - I can pretty much resist the icy stares, the indignant meows and even Tippy's patented "dozer" protest, which consists of headbutting things off the kitchen table until we feed him. Yes indeed, I can meet the cold stares with indifferent resolve (most of the time, anyway) - but the mornings are a completely different story!

The cats begin their nightly campaign about 90 minutes before meal time. So they start to get warmed up around 6:30pm for dinner - and 6:30am or earlier for breakfast. Now 6:30am is when I am typically trying to soak up the last few minutes of precious sleep before my workday begins. You'd think they would respect that. But do they care that I work late most nights and need all the rest I can get?

Nope.

I could go into detail about the elaborate (nay, diabolical)plans they hatch to wake me up every morning, but I think the video above pretty much covers it - with one important difference - - - the lucky human in the video only has ONE cat to cope with - I have THREE of them, acting in concert!

This morning was particularly bad.

It is now 8:40pm, and there they are - standing at my feet staring at me greedily, implacably. They know perfectly well that they have already been fed, but here they are looking at me with eyes that say, "But we're soooo hungry! If we die of starvation, it's on your head, McEmrys!" And now Gabriel, my Siamese cat, who is strong in the ways of the Force, is trying to fix me with his cold blue eyes..."Be in my eyes", he purrs, "Be in my eyes...."


But I will be strong. I will. I really will.....