Insomnia

Someone once said that when you’re in the mood to write you should write. Eh? What do you mean 'who'? I don’t know who, stop asking stupid bloody questions. Someone else once said that I was in denial, and I definitely wasn’t, so I guess all the someones in the world may not always be right. Anyway. I’m in the mood to write.

What’s up with our cats? Cats are supposed to sleep during the day and again during the night. Cats sleep like twice as much as the average human being, which is like four times as much as me. Our cats don’t sleep. They get maybe a couple of hours around lunchtime and then they just loaf about all day and all evening looking bored and pissed off. I’m not even sure that they sleep all night; every time I’ve ever got up in the night there’s been one or both of them camped out on sentry duty outside the door. I wonder if they have a rota for that. Maybe I should put up Cats Patrolling signs to warn people of the feline security arrangements. I digress. The cats do not sleep.

I’m firmly of the opinion that they also have competitions. They definitely take it in turns with the ‘no, honest, it’s 5pm and time for food’ routine in an attempt to get someone to give them some more food every 20 minutes. Hershey usually wins, and Pixel usually consumes the spoils. I wonder if that’s another arrangement they have? Winner goes hungry? Hang on a minute, is there a really small piece of paper hidden somewhere in the house with scrawled writing on it (no opposable thumbs makes writing quite difficult for cats I imagine, so it’s going to be no calligraphy demonstration that’s for sure) detailing who’s doing what and at what time on what day? Where the hell would they hide it, it’s not in the rug that they usually mong out on by the front window cos I’d have spotted it amidst the four jumpers’-worth of hair knotted up in it.

Which leads on to another question – how do they communicate with each other if they don’t send notes? They meow squawk and bark at us – no really, they do all three. Pixel has a morning greeting which, if she could tip her tongue and perform the correct annunciation of a T would, I am quite sure, sound like ‘TWAAAAAAAAAAAT!’. Affection first thing in the morning always ensures an early breakfast, it seems. But they never talk to each other unless they’re tearing fur and biting ears cos one of them has the required half inch of blanket that the other one came to lay on. Psychic cats. There’s a thought.

But that doesn’t work either, cos if it did then Hershey would know by now that puking on the carpet in at least three separate places is certainly going to get her the attention that she craves but it’s attention consisting mostly of the words ‘fucking’ and ‘bastard’. There would have to be a better way, especially for the ‘Brain’ of the team. Even ‘Pinky’s inverted negative 4g flop dive onto a surface right next to you in a flagrant ‘PLEASE FUSS ME’ way carries less obvious overtures and attracts a far more amenable response. Double bluff. It could be a double bluff. Maybe they’re trying to spread confusion in our ranks. Damn, where will it all end.