A Limited Treatise on Why I Hate My Cat Right Now

How can I hate all that cuteness?  Easy.

It’s 5 AM.

Can’t my cat read time?  Should I get her a wristwatch?  I don’t know.  I’m too tired to puzzle it out this early.

I am not a morning person.  I have never been a morning person.  I hate morning people.  Waking up before noon is a sign of mental illness.  If I did not have a family that forces me to keep a schedule that matches theirs, I would become fully nocturnal and sleep the days away.

My cat, however, is a morning person.

I tried to ignore the incessant caterwauling coming from the twenty pounds of annoying stuffed into five pounds of fur-covered noise.  I really tried.  But alas, the cat knows that the threat of her singing the song of her people to my daughter is usually enough to get me up.  One small irritating creature at a time, thank you very much.

I suppose I should be grateful that she doesn’t keep me up all night zooming around the house like a tiny F-16 with unlimited fuel following the orders of overzealous generals with ADHD.  I should be grateful.  But I’m not.  I’m too damn tired.

To stop the noise, I trudged like a rotting reanimated corpse down the stairs and slid open the glass door to free the beast.  Did she appreciate this?  No.  She only cares about herself, the narcissistic furball.

As I sit here barely conscious, I recognize that this is the best time to let the cat roam in our postage stamp of a backyard.  The heat of the day hasn’t yet fallen over the backyard like an electric blanket set to char-broil, the paver stones are not yet baked to a temperature approaching that of lava, and the birds–the adorable little hummingbirds not the obnoxious mourning doves–are whizzing happily around the patio, high on the sugar water from my feeder.

But that fact does not make rolling out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn any easier.  I wonder if cats can learn how to make coffee?