How can you really hate an animal that is calling out in the night for love?
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“Children of the night… what beautiful music they make!” -Count Dracula
This was written when the progeny were much younger.
Cats speak to me. Across the darkened streets of my neighborhood, hidden underneath rhododendron bushes swaying in the night wind, sitting on top of cars parked in driveways, they call to me. Well, not exactly to me. They call to other four-legged feline miscreants prowling the neighborhood in the dark. They all seem to do it directly under my window, creating the illusion that I am the target.
I like cats. I’ve owned several. I admire their attitude about things.
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I like cats. I’ve owned several. I admire their attitude about things. It’s just that this nocturnal symphony of erotic yearning is cutting into my already depleted stockpile of meaningful sleep. I have none to spare. As hordes of neighborhood cats court and spark, I grow more ragged and sleep deprived.
When you have a child, people who have had kids before you knowingly grab your elbow, and tell you your life will change totally. But they never tell you how, in what way. Well, I’m going to let out the big secret. The biggest, nastiest, and most irrevocable change that occurs when you have kids is that you experience five straight years of sleep deprivation. Given the spacing of our two kids, my son being four-and-a half and my daughter being seven-and-a half, we were actually seven-plus years into our hallucinatory, sleep deprived kayak journey through the endless night. It is enough to change your personality, and not for the better.
So forgive my rant about cats here. It isn’t just the cats, and their unearthly noises. It is much bigger than that. Once the chorus from hell starts, it triggers a cascading series of events that turn nasty quickly. To borrow a phrase from Shawn Colvin, it is like riding shotgun down an avalanche.
Every night becomes Halloween here when Muffy, Ginger, and Bigfoot play hide and go seek in the pachysandra. Moon or no moon, fog or clear, they sing out their libidinous melody.
“Helloo, all cats within 30 miles, helloo! I just wanted to let you know I am free and frisky tonight.”
And there is always the inevitable answer. “Bigfoot? Stay out of this backyard, you varmint. This is my territory, and the babes here belong to me!”
Finally, to complete the triangle, we hear, “Helloo, Bigfoot! And Barney? This is Ginger … catch me if you can, you two big flaming feline love-monkeys!”
And the game is afoot, but inside the household it all starts unraveling. There is a remote possibility that I have slept through the first chorus, which ends abruptly when Trotsky the Wonder Dog responds to the racket. He leaps off the bed, stopping long enough to stretch and shake himself, which sets his array of dog tags rattling like sleigh bells. Then he runs to the window, and starts howling.
“Ramsey, Ramsey,” he calls. “Ramsey, cats! I hear cats! And I think they are gonna do it right in the driveway! Wait, I think they ARE doing it! You aren’t gonna let them do it in the driveway are you?”
Cats in heat sound uncannily like my kids crying. I know that seems perverse, but it is the truth.
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I shake myself awake and stumble out of bed. I head for the kids’ rooms, tripping over laundry baskets and fire trucks. Why the kids? That is the most insidious part of this infernal routine.
Cats in heat sound uncannily like my kids crying. I know that seems perverse, but it is the truth. Were I awake, I could tell the difference between my kids and those cats, but barely awakened, they get me every time. In my stupor, I think I have heard one or both of my beloved children calling out, and I respond. I check my daughter’s room. She is breathing evenly, resting, a half dozen books scattered around her sleeping form. My entrance into room has caused her to stir, so I sneak back out.
Then down the hall to my son. As I lean against the wall for support, Trotsky wiggling through my legs and compromising my balance even more, I walk directly into the door. I realize that I haven’t stopped to put on my glasses, which is actually of little consequence since I haven’t bothered to turn any lights on either.
I check his bed, rummaging my hand under his blankets to check if he is all right. I discover he is not in his bed. Still in the dark, I get down on my hands and knees and crawl around, trying to find him. I check his closet, I crawl into his secret hiding place under the bed, and no son.
By this time, I am more alert. I try to move more quickly down the hall, tripping into the laundry basket a second time. I slip back into the master bedroom, over to my wife. The cats have started up again, and Trotsky stands at the window cursing them. I shake my wife awake and tell her that our son is not in his bed. Sleepily, she ignores me and rolls over, and in the moonlight, I can see our son happily curled up on the bed. Our bed. In fact, he would be exactly between us, if I wasn’t stupidly wandering around in dark, like a laundry basket-seeking missile.
I want to hate cats, I really do. They will get me up every night for a week and knit me a sleepy muffled shroud that affects my ability to compete in a world where people are getting a lot more sleep than me.
Still, how can you really hate an animal that is calling out in the night for love? Don’t we all do that, to some extent, at some time in our lives? I find myself softening towards them. Until I remember that we don’t all urinate in children’s sandboxes; but cats do.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock