My wife and I may be the human-types in the family, but our cat Freckles is the one with the daily schedule. She spends the night on the bed with us, but every morning at 6:30 she is up, and waiting for me to go downstairs. She will wait patiently until 6:45 or so, and then she starts pacing, mewping, and sitting and staring. Freckles has a stare that will burn holes right through the back of your skull.
Why does she need to go downstairs? Not for breakfast, which she and her sister Pyewackett do not get until 8 (we having long ago realized that feeding the cats the moment we got up simply resulted in them getting us up earlier and earlier each morning). No, Freckles needs to go downstairs so she can jump up on the breadbox on the counter and stare at the birds in the evergreen tree outside the kitchen window. Why does she need me to go downstairs for her to do that?
I dunno, she just does. Don't ask stupid questions.
After 5 minutes of bird watching she goes right back upstairs until breakfast. This all may seem trivial to you, but it's quite important to her, and if I lounge in bed until, oh, 7:05 or so she'll sit on my chest and paw at my face.
She's pretty laid-back for the bulk of the day- she has her post-breakfast nap, her mid-morning nap, her pre-lunch nap, her post-lunch nap, her mid-afternoon nap, and her late-mid-afternoon nap. Often she saves some energy by combining these naps together.
By late afternoon she is up and starting to worry about dinner (that's her dinner), which is at 7. Between 5:30 and 7 she will sit on either my desk or Amy's desk and stare at us. And after dinner (our dinner, usually around 8) we all (Amy, Freckles and I) go upstairs and sit on the couch and read or watch a little tubey. If we do not go upstairs directly after dinner she will sit on the stairs and wait for us. If we are too much later she will come back down and start to pace.
If we do something really cold and unfeeling and cruel, like actually go out somewhere, she will pace the house, yowling, until we come home. She will be waiting as we come in the door, stalk over and give us the most annoyed kitty "murrrrmph!" you've ever heard. No cat can "harrumph" with quite the same tone of total annoyance that Freckles can.
So that's her daily schedule. We fiddle with it at our peril. Her sister Pyewackett is not nearly as regimented. Give her a box and she's happy for days...
21 comments:
Wow, sounds just like my daily schedule. I wonder if I'll come back as a cat?
Beautiful cats. I've always been partial to black cats. I'm the cat person in the house my wife definitely is not. We have a dog.
Damn, that is one organized kitty.
My cat is pretty easy going but my very old dog has a bizarre schedule. No matter how much we take him out before bedtime, he wakes at three in the morning and must be taken out again. From that point on he sits in the kitchen and barks for his food. About four or so the barking gets to us and one of us gets up, feeds him and takes him out to poop. After that he goes to sleep until about two in the afternoon and we start all over again.
Since he is deaf we can't scold him so we just live on his little schedule.
You are right, your cat does have a look on its face that seems to mean business. If you look at my cat he will meow and that meow sounds just like it should a question mark behind it. It's a cat saying, What? You need something? Why are you looking at me?
You have to appreciate an organized cat.
My cat is not nearly so organized. As a matter of fact, I probably should have named the cat Chaos.
HungryMo: I think we all come back as cats. Except Dik Cheney. He's coming back as a rat.
Bruce: Why not get a cat too? They usually manage to put dogs in their place.
PoP: Maybe your dog is simply living in a different time zone from you.
That photo caught Freckles looking what we call "pointy". She gets pointy when she wants something. She has the most amazing range of vocal expressions I've ever heard, and its obvious what each of them means.
Mike: The cat is far more organised than I am.
("Mewp" - a technical term. Just needed to point that out.)
Ahhh...so THAT'S what it's like to live with a normal cat. Ollie is normal, but like the rest of us, he has been cowed by Fiero the Asshole Feline Terrorist.
Cat people don't get how funny and incredibly nuanced cat behavior is.
(*wonders if statements like that are why Angryman has dubbed me "Crazy Cat Lady"...*)
cats are bad. mmmmkay?
HTGT: I think you have to own six or more cats to be considered a 'Crazy Cat Lady'.
TV: Well, we're Massholes, what'd you expect?
i hope i come back as a cat too. id watch my owner take a shower, even if he/she was ugly, just to make them uncomfortable.
If the cat gets really out of line trying to wake you up in the morning, you could try drop-kicking it down the stairs. That would teach it a lesson.
Great post, Colonel. It prompted me to post about our cats. (Giving you, of course, full credit for inspiration.)
We used to free feed out cats, but two of them decided all of a sudden that it would be cool to eat till they vomited, then eat some more, then vomit some more, anyhow we stopped. I was amazed at how quickly they readjusted. Five minutes before grubtime they're all standing on the table staring at me.
But, my Screechycat rules with an iron paw. He screeches and demands that I come pet him to sleep when he wants to nap (like a thousand times a day).
T-Bird: And then you could lick them.
Angryman: Surprisingly, no, it didn't. Um, I mean wouldn't...
Catalyst: Happy to be inspirational- I'll be right over!
BB: Yes, we tried leaving food out for ours at the beginning and Pyewackett decided that her new hobby would be nonstop eating, so we had to stop that pretty fast.
Cats rock
She does it all for you. She's decided what's best for you, and so she makes all these sacrifices - like giving up her first pre-breakfast nap - just to save you the bother of an alarm clock.
Who says cats are not ritualistic!
My mother had a cat that warned her every time the electric jug boiled. It was in the days before the auto cutout ones, & our mother had burned out about 50 elements! That cat saved her a lot of money on burned out elements!
Malach: And they purr!
Phoebe: You're right of course. I feel so ungrateful.
Meggie: Leaving her more money to spend on cat food...
You're cat appears to be like this cat:
Wake Up Cat
lol! Your kitties are cute!
The new addition to my family seems to have a 'fun' new schedule too, it includes doing number 'two' as soon as I sit down to eat any meal... the problem you ask? Is that I live in a five hundred square foot loft ... so guess how many feet away from my McGriddle kitty's business is??!!
lol! Your kitties are cute!
The new addition to my family seems to have a 'fun' new schedule too, it includes doing number 'two' as soon as I sit down to eat any meal... the problem you ask? Is that I live in a five hundred square foot loft ... so guess how many feet away from my McGriddle kitty's business is??!!
lol! Your kitties are cute!
The new addition to my family seems to have a 'fun' new schedule too, it includes doing number 'two' as soon as I sit down to eat any meal... the problem you ask? Is that I live in a five hundred square foot loft ... so guess how many feet away from my McGriddle kitty's business is??!!
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