Saturday evening, before I went to bed, I carefully went through the house and set all the clocks back. Yesterday afternoon, I made one more check. All the clocks had been set back to Standard Time. I was good. But I forgot one.
I forgot to set the cat back an hour.
Many people refer to the fall back time change as the good time change. We get an extra hour’s sleep. Or regain the one we lost in the spring. It really doesn’t have much effect on me. I’ve never had a problem with the time change. Others in the family are not so lucky. The dog doesn’t seem to care, but it would seem the cat didn’t get the memo.
So this morning, I felt a furry face bopping into mine. I was still asleep at the time, or had been before the head bopping started. I tried to force myself to keep my eyes closed, knowing what would happen if they opened. But there must have been some sort of twitch, because the head bop was quickly replaced with a paw whacking me in the nose.
It was morning. The sun was up. Therefore, humans should be up and discharging their proper duties for the day. Like filling food bowls. We had probably gotten to a dangerous level of food in the bowl. Not empty, but possibly close to where the bottom of the bowl could be detected. Maybe not clearly seen, but detected. For many cats, that is truly frightening, and must be dealt with immediately. My cat seemed to be of that opinion this morning.
Most days, my sleeping habits are of little concern to the cat. I am allowed to sleep, provided I have performed all duties that may have been of concern to the cat. Mostly this concerns food. Sometimes water. And possibly the opening of the door.
The opening of a door is can also be a problem. Like when it’s raining. Obviously, if you are a cat, this is the fault of the human doing the door opening. They have simply opened the wrong door. That one should be shut and you should open the one that leads to sunshine and warm places to sleep in said sun.
But this morning, it was all about the food. There are times when I might ignore the cat, but I am also concerned that if I do too good a job pretending to be asleep, she might decide I am not longer capable of filling her bowl and since I can’t give her food, maybe I should just be the food. I have little doubt the cat might decide to snack on me unless I prove myself useful.
I haven’t dared to mention the current state of pet food aisles in grocery stores. So far, I have been lucky and managed to find the correct food. These people who pass these things off as supply chain issues probably don’t have cats, so they don’t realize how serious the situation could become.
But that’s why I think we need to do away with the time change. Cats don’t get it. But if they don’t get their food on time there could be trouble. Big trouble.
We need to fix this for the cats.
