I have something embarrassing to admit. Never consciously thought about the fact that I am embarrassed by it until today. At 5:16 a.m.
My cat rules my life. She has complete control of the house. When she is not happy it stresses me out. Her allergy related asthma (worsened by living at the edge of a rainforest in the rainy season) makes me anxious. And when she wakes me up at 4:30 a.m. every morning I get up and deal with her. Unfortunately, she wakes me up at 4:30 almost every morning
It starts with walking across me as I sleep. At first I lie still and pretend I am asleep. Then she licks my hand. Continue feigning sleep. Then it's my nose. Or any part of my face she can reach, but she prefers the tip of my nose if she can get at it. Her tongue is rough. She doesn't lick gently. I toss and turn a few times. Sometimes, like maybe once out of 10, this works. She gets distracted and I go back to sleep. But the other nine times she won't stop and the licking is accompanied by soft cries.
If I am able to ignore all of this, she jumps onto one of several shelves in the room and proceeds to knock everything off. I used to have breakable things on my shelves. Not anymore. Everything breakable is already broken. My prized trophy for serving at The Breakfast Program, two candles, picture frames, my bite-guard, a lamp, and several glasses (some full of juice) are all victims of Jetty's 4:30 a.m. self entertainment.
I have varied responses according to my mood, what I was dreaming when she woke me up, how much sleep I got prior to 4:30, how much sleep I will be able to get afterward, and how much food was in her dish when I go to bed at night.
You see Jetty eats canned food and she only likes it fresh. So if I put out a fresh can at night when she already has some left, she will discard the "old" and only eat the new. If I stack fresh food on top of her remaining food, she will eat until she gets close to the old food. Then she will stop, wasting the old food and part of the new food. So my biggest hope every day is that she finishes her food at some point before bedtime and has plenty left each night when I go to sleep.
If I know there is food in her bowl at 4:30 I have less patience. It can get a little ugly. I yell "Stop", "Don't lick me", "Get down from there". The neighbors might hear me, but Jetty doesn't seem to. I have locked her out of the bedroom. But now, with the rainy season, my bedroom door is swollen and doesn't close tightly. Recently I discovered that for some reason at 4:30 in the morning Jetty sometimes needs a gentle reminder that she already has food in her bowl. So my first reaction once I reach full consciousness is now to go to the bowl, pick it up and put it back down. She eats and I go back to sleep.
If there is no food I get up. She purrs. I shake the can to loosen up the food as she weaves between my legs. I peel the sticker off the pull tab - something they apparently have to do in order to import Friskies canned food to Honduras. That darn sticker is hard to peel through half open eyes. Finally I dump the food into the bowl and stick the empty can on top of the newel post.
I used to put the can in the garbage, but have learned if I do I will be woken again to the sound of the garbage can tipping over and Jetty digging the can out of the garbage, then licking it clean on the tile floor. It is a lovely noise to try to sleep to.
This morning I was unable to fall back asleep. Since it was a holiday I turned on the computer and was searching for interesting blogs to follow. I've been doing that for a few days but haven't found much of interest. Most people gave up blogging a few years ago so everything is dated June 2010ish. This morning I found a blog written by a 29 year old girl living in Chicago. I lived in Chicago when I was 29. She is from NY. Me too. She is a foodie, like me. And she has a cat whose "prime hours of operation" are between 4:30 and 5:15 a.m. Hahahaha! It was 5:16 a.m. Jetty was lying next to me with a full stomach, sound asleep.
Somehow I found comfort in the fact that I am not the only one who has this problem. So today I am admitting to the world. I have a cat who controls my life. And if you ever need a favor at 4:30 a.m., I'm your gal.
