I know a cat who thinks of ghosts
He’ll eat yer breakfast
He’ll eat yer toast
He don’t use butter
He don’t use cheese
He don’t use jelly
Or any of these
Em hasn’t been sleeping much lately. The past two nights have been almost sleepless for the both of us. From 8 PM until about midnight, things are fine. But after midnight, everything falls apart. On Sunday night, I got roughly 3 hours of sleep in total. Last night, things improved, but not by much. We’re running on five hours of interrupted sleep today. I am not sure how he has energy to do much of anything. I certainly don’t.
On Monday morning at about 4 AM, Em finally fell back to sleep after three hours of fussing. I was able to drift off as well.
But 5:00 AM rolled around and Murray had different plans for me.
I’ve written about his love for the dresser next to my head. He paws around up there until I get up and feed him. Well, at 5 AM on Monday morning, I wasn’t having it. Murray would have to wait a few hours to have breakfast. Goodness knows, he’s not going to die of starvation anytime soon. He certainly could stand to lose a few pounds.
But Murray wasn’t giving up. He obviously thought he was starving to death. This time there wasn’t a whole lot of rummaging around and when things are quiet? Well, I learned from having a kid that when things are really quiet, usually that means something far worse is taking place.
I pried my eyes open.
Murray is standing above me dipping his paw into the tub of vaseline Toby Joe left open and on the dresser. But he wasn’t just dipping his paw into the vaseline, because that might actually make sense. Maybe he was nursing the wound I wrote about last week.
No, Murray wasn’t just taking a dip. Murray was licking the vaseline off his paw.
This worked. I got up, fed all three cats at 5 AM and then tried to fall back to sleep.
No such luck. Em was up within the hour.
These creatures I live with? They’re lucky they’re cute.
But, vaseline?
Luckily my cats figured out when I was pregnant and working nights that waking me up resulted in being kicked out of the bedroom and/or having a pillow tossed at them. Sometimes, however, my Russian Blue hangs outside my window and hollers to be let in so he can drink out of the toilet (? it’s not like they don’t have a clean water bowl) and curl up at the foot of the bed.
I love how all four cats claim starvation and abuse until I open a tuna can, only to have them nibble lightly and wander off. obviously not that bad off.
sorry about the lack of sleep; my two-month old has been depriving me, too.
p.s. my Russian Blue is hanging outside the door now. >.>
Wellllll…the one upside…is that if Murray is ever constipated, you know he likes petroleum jelly and you won’t have to buy fancy-shmancy cat laxatives, many of which are basically flavored petroleum jelly.
Hey, at least he got into something that won’t hurt him for a change! :D My vet back in Michigan said we should give a fingerful of petroleum jelly to the cats to help with hairballs.
Three words I hope to never hear together again: Toby, Tub, Vaseline
Bad memories, wizard?
My vet once told me to put a little vaseline on the cats’ noses to help with their hairballs. It drove one cat nuts, so she’d lick it off to get her nose clean, but the other cat looooooved it and would lick it off my finger before I could get it to her nose.
So either Murray isn’t as weird in that respect as you think or my cat is just as weird.