Why am I awake before the sparrows?

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

4.30am today I’m woken by Mandrake, our three-legged marmalade tabby, making loud noises and committing olfactory crimes. By 4.50am I’ve had enough, I’m obviously not going to get back to sleep despite the fact that I feel knackered, and so I throw back the covers and exit bedroom door. But as I’m doing so, Husband complains about me making noise.

I don’t get it. The beloved can sleep through the end of time and space as we know it, a herd of bull elephants could come into the room at night and dance on his pretty long eyelashes, and he wouldn’t wake up. The cat’s din doesn’t bother him, and neither does he wake as a consequence of the attack on the nasal passages committed by that damnable feline. I know he has a nose that works much the same as mine, and I’m more likely to be deaf than him, so what gives? Why am I awake before the sparrows, while he sleeps on? 

As for Mandrake, he’s slept in the bedroom most every night for the last six months. But he’s burned his bridges now. He can sleep with the others in the utility room downstairs. I’m not saying the animal decided to use his tray on a whim, but he certainly wanted to wake me up. Yes, me. Not the beloved. The cat knows I’m the light sleeper, and kept coming up to my ear to yowl, only to move away at high speed knowing my arm was emerging from under the covers and descending to smite him for his evil behaviour. 

For two nights in a row that cat has behaved out of character. He normally stays indoors in the late evening, but twice he’s been outdoors and I’ve had to go get him. He’s just been sitting in the garden, and, when approached, has acted rather skittish and weird. So, tonight, he does that again, I’m not going to go get him. He can stay out. He can come in via the cat-flap and join the others when he feels like it, but he’ll miss his dinner. Do I care? No. It will serve the animal right. Is he ill? No, I don’t think so. I suspect he wants out because the night-time temperature at this time of year is, from his perspective, tolerable. And he cares not what he has to do to achieve his aim. Evil beast.

Thing is, he’s dumb. He gets into trouble. He’s survived being hit by cars twice last year, though one of those incidents cost him a leg. There’s nowhere near the same amount of traffic around this house, despite the move in December from countryside to market town. But still, I just know he’ll find some way to injure himself. At least, that’s my fear.

But it won’t keep me awake at night. Unlike the bloody cat.

categories: animals