welcome to my life in the morning

Video: "Morning Cat"

The co-owner of Erik the Red and Learned Claw should appreciate this video. He should also not watch it at le boulot because he will laut lauchen. It's just so true.

The dance of the hungry cat I

When the cats haven't been fed in the morning, they are very cute and meowy. We call it the "dance" when they rush to the food bowls.

If you're wondering why my room is such a mess, it is because when the cats are hungry in the morning, Erik the Red likes to knock things off my bedside table (water bottles, notebooks, pens, books, hairbands--all of which may be seen on my floor), so that's where you see them in the video. Verisimilitude. It's what I'm about.

cats + morning = not asleep

For whatever reason, the idea that I am going to bury myself in a warm cocoon of blankets is unacceptable to either cat. Unless I am awake at, say 7:00am, the cats are displeased . . . which is to say that they are displeased almost every morning.

Learned Claw comes over with a "prrrOW" that's somehow nasal in a way I've never heard a cat be nasal before. And then he'll leap up on the bed (he sort of scrambles a bit with his back legs because of the extra fluff-weight) and nudge me with his head and look at me with these big, luminously sad greeny-yellow eyes. Like he's dying. Manipulator.

Erik is much more straightforward. He'll chirp "Mraow!" and then trot over to the bed. If I don't immediately start petting him, he'll look over to the bedside table to see what he can push off of it that will make the most noise and, preferably, break. This morning, it was two--not one but TWO--books that sounded like a gunshot. I leapt about 2 feet in the air out of a dead sleep. Sometimes I want to murder that damn cat.