Imagine if you will four
cats. Mickey, Charlotte and Gabriel get
along with each other, but Chanel gets bullied by Gabriel. So, to prevent a fight I came up with the
plan of separating them. Some nights
Chanel gets to sleep with me, other nights Gabriel gets to share my bed. When I’m ready to turn in I close my
door. And that’s when it starts …
No sooner am I in bed or
there is scratching at the door. I know
that scratch, only one cat scratches … Mickey.
So I get up and let him in.
Within minutes I will
hear a throaty meow. I know that meow,
only Charlotte sounds like an old coffee grinder. So once again I get up and let her in.
It’s not long before
Mickey decides he wants to go out. I try
to make him change his mind by calling him to bed or tempting him with a nice
soft basket. Sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn’t. So I have to get
up again to let Mick out.
While I’m up I turn to
Charlotte … “Do you want to go out too?”
Charlotte isn’t moving, she seems quite happy where she is at the
time. Of course, that doesn’t last
long. Sooner or later she decides she
wants a change of scenery. So, up again
to now let Charlotte out.
When I hear Mickey scratching
and Charlotte meowing again I decide to ignore them. If I let them in I’ll only have to get up
again to let them out. “No Mickey,” I
call, “go to sleep.” My call gets
answered by more scratching and meowing, but I stand (or rather lie) firm, I’m
not letting them in.
That’s when Gabriel
raises his head with a face like “Can’t you hear there’s someone at the
door?” Now I have to content with a cat
looking at me, waiting to answer his friends’ call.
I’m not falling for it, he can look at me until the cows come home, I’m
in bed and I’m staying put.
That is until Gabriel
keeps looking at me, now adding a soft “Meeeee” to get his message across. “Oh all right, I’ll let them in,” I tell
him. “But they better go to sleep or ….” Or what?
In the wee hours of the
morning I wake up from a pitiful cry.
Now Gabriel wants to go out.
“Gabriel, no, come back to bed.”
“Gabriel, no, come back to bed.”
“Mee.”
“No, come, go back to
sleep.”
“Mee eee”
If I ignore his meow (or
what has to pass for one) it just gets longer and more urgent. Like an opera singer launching into an area
of Tosca. “Meeeee eeeee eeeee”.
Oh for goodness sake
okay, I’m coming.
I wonder what Mickey,
Charlotte and Gabriel are saying when they get together. She falls for it every time?
On the nights that I let
Chanel sleep with me, that’s no picnic either.
She curls up with me and doesn’t ask to be let out, but she keeps me
awake in other ways … first purring and then snoring.
Jeez but that cat can
snore. At times I’ve asked her if she
can turn the volume down a bit, which results in a sound an octave higher than
before. Not to mention that she likes to
lie close to me, ticking my face with her whiskers.
Now that I’m up everyone
is sound asleep. Nobody wants to go out,
nobody wants to come in. Nobody purrs,
nobody snores. For some reason I feel
like playing music … really loud.
