What Precarious Cat Patience Looks Like

Time for another insight into my cat’s life.

Like most families, our weekdays here are fairly predictable. We get up at roughly the same time Monday through Friday. I generally get up first, take a few minutes to convince my brain that it is in fact time to be conscious, then I go wake up Kiddo.

One of Kiddo’s morning tasks is feeding the cat. The cat knows this. The cat also knows it is my job to wake up Kiddo. If I take too long getting out of bed after my alarm goes off, it is my door the cat starts pawing, not Kiddo’s. Once I do get up, the cat walks in front of, through, and around my legs (very dangerous when I’m half asleep; it’s a miracle I’m still alive) until I head for Kiddo’s door.

On most weekdays, no matter what time he went to sleep the night before, I have to drag Kiddo out of a dead sleep. Yet, when the weekend rolls around, he wakes up on his own, usually earlier than he gets up on a weekday. Every once in a while, however, he will sleep late on Saturday or Sunday.

The cat, having no understanding of the difference between Monday and Saturday (oh to be a cat), follows me around as usual for a while but will eventually figure out I have no intention of waking Kiddo up. Nor will I do Kiddo’s job and feed the cat breakfast.

Eventually, when breakfast is unacceptably overdue, the cat will attempt to use his kitty mind powers to will Kiddo’s door to open.

The cat knows that with a little patience and persistence his mind powers will work. The door will open, and Kiddo will come out. What the cat doesn’t know is that this is only because ‘sleeping late’ for Kiddo currently means about 8am. Just wait, Kitty. Once we reach the full-on teen-sleep-in phase, you will learn the limit of those mind powers of yours.

At which time, the cat will probably try turning those powers on me. It will probably work too. He can be pretty annoying when he's hungry.