Flashes of Panic

The cat attempts several strategies to get me to wake up and feed him in the morning.

His favored approach involves sitting next to my head, putting one of his little white paws on my mouth, and slowly extending its claws into my lips. This has been less effective lately, as I have started “biting” his paws with my lips when I feel them close to my mouth.

If he was more persistent, he could almost certainly win with a different strategy, which he often starts but seldom sticks to. He gets a good purr going, then sticks his nose in my ear. The combination of the up-close full-volume purr flood and the tickling of his whiskers (plus the sniffing noise and the rushing air connected to hauling a pretty good volume of air in and out through his tiny nose) almost always produces sleepy chuckles from me; if he’d stick to it, he’d have me wide awake and laughing at him.

I suppose he would rather dominate me with his weapons than bring the indignity of participating in a joke. Cats are not, generally, willing clowns. But when they fall into the role inadvertently, they do it so well!

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