2007-01-08 - 8:09 a.m.

..morning life with cats...

The funk is lifting a little bit. Or rather, the negative thoughts only take over my consciousness intermittently now. Such as when I'm lying in bed and trying to fall asleep, or when I'm just waking up and trying to enjoy those last few seconds of half-sleep. There is a wonderful poem about this called "6 am Thoughts" describing these invasions of our thoughts in the morning as 'importunate children' or lively puppies. It's one of my favorites.

Anyway, I woke up before the alarm today because I heard Mizzy scratching in the upstairs litterbox. Mizzy had an exciting night. She rummaged through our garbage and spread egg shells, coffee grounds, cat food bags, tin foil and various other wrappings all over the back porch. And then she came upstairs and had a vomit-fest all around the room - nice way to be awakened. K - who was still awake and working downstairs - was an angel and came up and cleaned up after her, and then followed her downstairs where the vomit-fest had continued. A few minutes later, Mizzy was upstairs, curled up on my tummy, and purring loudly - either asking forgiveness or in denial that she would ever do such a thing. Given that she's a cat, I expect the latter.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. There are poems about how quiet cats are. Ours are NOT. Mizzy in particular has four little LEAD FEET. And so this morning, after scratching through the litter pebbles I heard her distinctive "KA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA" across the floor and then "FA-LOOMPH" as she leapt over the suitcases into the attic storage space, and then again "KA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA" somewhere inside the brain of the house, and then SWOOOOCH through the hole in the porch followed by a 'TIP TIP TIP TIP' across the roof. And then the whole thing in reverse as she came back: "TIP TIP TIP TIP SWOOCH KA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA FA-LOOMPH..TIP TIP... KA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA.."
and then down the stairs.

I lay in bed wondering if some part of our attic has become a secondary litterbox... I stretched my neck up and looked down at Lyra - who was of course lying full length horizontally across where my kneecaps should have been. Her neck was also crooked up in attempts to hear where Mizzy had gone. I doubt that she was wondering about the litterbox, though. I curled over in one last ditch effort to squeeze out the last few minutes of sleep before the alarm. Which of course irritated Lyra so she lept onto the floor - FWUMP.

Anyway, thoughts of the litterbox intermingled with thoughts of panic and inferiority in science and thoughts of how the hell am I going to do in my first lecture today...until I decided that this half-consciousness really wasn't doing me any good, and that it was time to come downstairs.

So here I am. Off for a quick shower before taking the sky train to work.