Just about every day I ask the same question: “Why do we own five animals??” More often than not, this question is asked between 6:30 and 7:30am, just as I’m trying to finish off my morning sleep and our five furry alarm clocks are letting me know, in less than gentle terms, that morning has broken.
Bill and Maggie will have started their morning calesthenics, chasing each other through the house, creating a thundering herd of cat. This usually gets Eli’s attention, who then goes tearing off after them, growling and snarling. (Good thing he’s only playing!) The train of cat-cat-dog will then run over the Red Dog, waking him up. Since he’s awake, he comes into our room and sticks his big red face in mine and pants his horrid dog breath into my dreams. Somewhere in all of this flurry of activity, my cat will come into our room and jump on top of the television, which is an amazingly noisy process.
If none of this gets us out of bed, then Bill and Maggie pull out the big guns, moving thier chase to our bedroom, where their path criss-crosses our bed, with at least one of them using a sleeping human for a springboard at a dead run. Claws have known to be involved in this process.
Although I’ve perfected Beau Hunk’s habit of creating a blissful nest of silence by sleeping the morning away with my head sandwiched between two pillows, I have yet to find anything that protects my sleep from a cat missle, fired from ten feet. It’s usually at this point when one of us wakes up and sleepily stomps out of the room, wishing we were awake enough to kick anything that’s dumb enough to stay within a foot’s reach.
What really blows my mind about this process is that apparently it is clock driven, not Earth-to-sun ratio driven. When we hit Daylight Savings Time, I thought the circus might start an hour later, but nooooooo, can’t have that! The little fuckers started in at the same time, even though it was dark. I swear, they’ve learned to tell time.
More than once Beau Hunk has threated to turn Bill into a fuzzy pair of underwear during this awakening period. On other occasions he’s proposed we start our own version of Survivor, voting cats into the canyon as they piss us off. Most of the time I end up cracking one sleep-crusted eye open and letting the herd know that I am the only thing that stands between them and being the special of the day at the Coyote Diner, so they damn well better start sucking up to the Momma. Letting her sleep would be a great start. This tactic has yet to pay off.
Bill did reach a new height of obnoxious the other night, and believe me, that’s saying something. Beau Hunk fried a chicken, and when he was done, he scraped out the pan into the disposal. Then we left the house and ran an errand.
When we got back, Bill was sporting an odd spikey hairdo on the back of his head and shoulders. The counter was greasy, and there was a smear from something that had been dragged out on to the counter and consumed. I picked up Bill and sniffed his head. I think Beau Hunk said it best: “Bill! You smell like the ass-end of a KFC!” The little fucker had stuck his fat head into the disposal and made a snack of the pan scrapings, getting fried chicken grease all over his head and shoulders.
So as I type this, guess what each and every one of the Five Furry Fuckers is doing? You guessed it – sleeping. And not one of them is doing it within arm’s reach of me. Two words kids: Coyote Chow. Just something to think about.