cats don’t understand daylight savings time

My cats are very particular about their sleep. You wouldn’t know it right now, when they are both curled up, snoring, one of them blocking the stairs as much as catly possible. But they can be demanding. At night, their preferred sleeping location is in our bed, with us in it. If we are up too late, they pace around, yelling at us in their meowing voices, “we are ready to go to bed now!” Actually, they say “meow, meooooow”, but we can tell what they mean. When we finally head downstairs, they race in front of us and take the good spots in bed so that by the time we get there, we have to contort our bodies around them to even lie down.

P. likes to think that he can be the boss of them (“they’re cats!” he says), but when he pushes them out of a spot, they just climb right back to that spot, and if part of him happens to be there — his leg, his arm, his face, well, then so be it.

These days, however, the cats have had to find new places to sleep. It’s not that we don’t like snoring cats on top of our heads in the night, it’s that we have this flea problem. And until we can be sure that the cats aren’t bringing little flea friends into our bed, it’s sleeping in front of the stairs for them.

They’ve actually adapted OK. After a few nights of sneakily trying to figure out how to open the door, they remembered they were lazy and wandered off. But they have limited patience. Once morning comes around, they figure it’s time for us to hang out with them again, and they yell at us from behind the door until we get up. You would think it’s because they’re hungry, but no. Their bowls are filled. They just have gone long enough without us, and dammit, we’re getting up now whether we like it or not.

They know that once I get up, I’ll get coffee and then sit on the couch for a while, working, until I’m awake enough to actually drive to the office. They run up the stairs as soon as I put the coffee on and stake out key couch spots before I get there. They deeply resent that the laptop gets prime placement on my lap. They plot against the laptop, often trying to crowd it out. So far, the laptop has stayed strong. Although an IT guy at work was helping me with something the other day and he looked at my laptop screen and said, “is that… hair?”

This arrangement normally works OK. The cats know when we normally get up and only start meowing at us if we try to sleep in a little.

They do not, however, understand daylight savings time.

They aren’t happy that have inexplicably decided to start sleeping an hour later every morning and they will not stand for it! All week, I have been trying to ignore them, but they are standing firm. When I finally open the door, they are always standing there with disapproving stares. The look says, “how can you make us stand here and meow at you for an hour. Get up on that couch now so we can take our morning nap. The things we do for you…”

And so I do. I know better than P. who’s the boss of who.

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