Have you ever decided to take a day out from your normal life? I did today, and I have decided I need to do it more often.
I half awoke at 7am to the sound of the radio alarm clock, and W poking me in the same manner you might prod a particularly unwanted animal from your back door.
“Switch the alarm clock off” (in reality, it sounded more like “swshhthlrmclockff”)
I rolled over, trying not to take 90% of the duvet with me and groped for the button. I can usually perform this trick on weekday mornings without waking; my mind and body has learned how to switch the alarm off and continue with the dream it is supplying to the back of my eyes. I have considered putting the alarm clock at the other end of the room, but no doubt my body would learn to walk there and back in response.
Once awake this Saturday morning - despite my ideas of having a lie in - the thought entered my mind that time spent lying in bed was time spent wasting my weekend. I fought the idea of getting up for half an hour, and was on the verge of scraping myself out of bed when there was a rather suspicious creaking floorboard sound from the landing.
“We can hear you Simpson” (this time it was clear)
Ah. So W is awake too then.
Simpson is our cat. He walks the house with the definite worldview that he owns everything. Everything done in our house is for his benefit, and if you don’t open his food cupboard when he walks in the direction of it, he does a very good line in annoyed expressions. Perhaps “annoyed” doesn’t quite cut it - “furious” would be better.
After conducting an unseen survey of the bedroom, something furry and four footed silently lands on the bed. The silence continues until he finds W’s hand, and receives a forced fuss (that’s him forcing the fuss, by the way). This is greeted with purring that sounds like a muffled motorbike.
I’m no expert on cat psychology, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that (a) we were in bed beyond our normal “getting up time”, and (b) the cat had not been fed yet. The same reasoning would probably explain the disgruntled staring match that now ensued between myself and the cat. Oh yes - I could hear his thoughts perfectly well - “What the fcking time do you call this? Where the f ck’s my breakfast? Explode out of this pit you snivelling spawn…”
While fighting the feline mind control attempt, I was reminded of a fridge magnet we have - “dogs have owners - cats have staff”.