“she’s writing on a saturday?”

Yes.

I’m up. It’s early. I’ve been up for a couple of hours. After email, going through the forum, going through Mighty Big TV and drinking water and sighing, I realized that I could probably just sit here and write an entry. Maybe after I’ll take a nice nap.

It’s very quiet in my apartment right now. That hardly ever happens. I think that’s why I sleep so well during this time. Usually.

This morning, however, Cal had other ideas.

He likes to stand on my back and start at the bottom, kneading around, pushing on my spine. At first, I’ll admit, it’s not so bad. He’s like, twenty pounds, so when he’s pushing on your muscles, it’s a bit like a free massage.

I’ll eventually have a dream where I’m trapped in an elevator or something.

But he’ll start working his way up, slowly going up my back until at one point, all twenty pounds (and ten claws) are hunched on my neck.

This is when he starts eating my hair.

Pushing him to the ground only makes him sing his morning songs.

There are a few morning songs. Here are their original words and translations.

Meh! Mirrrh! Mirrr!
Mrrrroooowww! Mirrrriewww! Mir! Mir! Meeeh!
Meeeaaarrriii! Meeeearrrooo! Mrriririririr!

translation:
It’s morning! Sun up!
Time for food! Time for eat! Time for water!
The bowl is half-empty and I’m really scared I shall starve!

Mih! Mih! Mih! Mih! Mih!
Mooorrir! Mirorrir! Mow! Mow! Mee!

translation:
Oh, no! Oh, no! No! No! No!
I am lost in the bathtub again! Send help!

Once you get tired of the singing, you sit up in bed. This starts a new song.

Mee! Mee! Mee! Mee! Mirh! Mirh! Mirh! Mirh! Mee! Mee! Mee! Mee! Mirh! Mirh! Mirh! Mirh!

translation:
They’re up! They’re up! They’re up! They’re up! Time for food! Time for food! Time for food! Time for food!

This would be more rewarding if once I got up and filled the bowl, Cal ran furiously over to eat for half an hour. Instead he runs furiously over to the bowl, watches me fill it, and then walks off. Taylor’s main concern seems to be that I’ll forget to fill the water bowl, or that I won’t use the water cooler to do it. He’ll sniff the food, but then he follows my ankles around as I fill the water bowl. Constantly staring at me as if at any moment I’m going to spill everything all over the place.

It’s Taylor who eats immediately. He likes things that are fresh. New litter. New food. New catnip.

I think maybe he’s sending Cal out to do his dirty work in the morning.

I’m here now with a sore back, wishing I could go back to sleep. We have grand plans today to clean out the apartment. To gather up things that we don’t want to take with us on the move and donate them to the Bad Dog for props and take the rest to Goodwill. I’m hoping we actually do that, but I know once we go out for breakfast we’ll get home and want to nap, or feel like going out to see a movie.

Speaking of movies (oh, the comic’s segue. How beautiful.), I just spent thirty minutes checking out the latest on Blair Witch. They’re setting up for the sequel. Do yourself a favor. If you’re one of those people that hated the first one and hadn’t done any of the online spook-fest stuff, try seeing the sequel already having freaked yourself out with too much knowledge. It’s much more fun that way. I promise.

I want to go back to sleep but I’ve been up for two hours now. It’s to the point where I might as well start cleaning something, even if I just start with a shower.

I kind of want to put Cal in the shower, just for a second, so he can understand what he’s doing to my head.

Listen, and this is really hard, but listen: Sometimes I really don’t like Cal. This breaks my heart, as of course, I love him, and all, but he drives me up a fucking wall. The running, the screaming, the breaking of things. He ate a script last night. He ate a script!

Part of it is when he got here almost a year ago, I wasn’t finished grieving over Lillith. It took a long time for me to let her go and let him in. Once that happened (when I was home with Bronchitis that week) I felt closer to him. He takes the occasional moment to sit in my lap or to let me pet him. But it’s Taylor who comes to my side while I’m typing. It’s Taylor who rubs his head on my leg (as he’s doing now). Cal’s the one who ate through my computer’s power cord and caused it to catch on fire a few weeks ago.

He’s really crazy. And sorta scary. And he likes to run full-speed into the sliding glass door with his head.

I want to be all cuddly with him, but sometimes I find it really hard to do. I get angry with him. I get sick of him. This rips me up. I’ve never been this way with any other pet except for some of my sister’s dogs growing up. I’d make myself feel unattached to them because I knew they weren’t going to last in our house for very long. If the dog was destructive in the slightest, it usually went to another home. I guess that’s part of what’s keeping me from getting attached to Cal. I seem to have this feeling that he’s not going to stick around. I guess that was the case at one point, that he wasn’t going to be with me for much longer, but now that he’s really here, and really in my living room, and singing his song right now as Taylor is drooling on my thigh, I want to have that same warm feeling when I look at him. I want to feel better when I see him. Instead I get this feeling of dread sometimes, that I’m about to be bitten or scratched or kicked or find out that he’s eaten one of my CDs. I don’t like that. I don’t know how to bond with him.

And it makes me wonder about parents and their kids. Sure, you love your kid. You’d do anything for your child. But are there times in your life when you just don’t like your child? It’s not anything that happened, it’s just that your personalities clash. Or maybe you never got a chance to really bond because you were busy or the kid was somewhere else for a while. How hard must that be. To look at your child and wonder, “How am I going to get in there? How am I going to make this work?” I know it has to happen, just as parents inevitably pick favorites with their children. It’s human nature to have a favorite. The trick is to not let the other one know that they’re not the favorite. I think Cal knows he’s not my favorite, and that he’s certainly Eric’s favorite. So when he bites me or scratches me, my paranoia says “he wants you dead,” but the rational part of me thinks, “He knows I wish Taylor was here instead.”

And these are cats, people. I know they are just cats. I’m not losing my shit here.

But the way we take care of these cats makes me think about children often, and how I don’t know if I’d be a good parent. I get so frustrated with Cal, and I see myself doing just what my parents would do when they got angry with me and I’m treating a cat this way.

And that’s just a cat. The cat can’t fight back or argue. Maybe he could run away, but this is the only family he knows, really. They are afraid of outside.

I am not trying to lower parenting to raising a cat, either. But when I’m having this much anxiety over raising a mewing furball, I wonder what I’ll do when it’s a crying baby in the other room, making the morning song, asking for food, scratching my stomach because he doesn’t know how strong he is when I’m holding him.

I guess I just need some more sleep.

This is why I don’t write on Saturday mornings.