The Wide Angle: Waking up in the morning is the cat’s meow
Published 6:46 am Saturday, August 18, 2018
I have an admission that may come as a surprise to everybody but my legion of 15 readers — I’m not perfect.
So maybe this will explain my possible un-American attitude of not liking elections or election coverage.
Or maybe it’s just an awkward segue into another part of this column.
Do we ever really know, or for that fact can we ever really be confident of how we spell “segue?”
It’s not that I’m against the act or don’t understand it’s importance to the democratic process. It’s a privilege and responsibility we all bare, which goes hand-in-hand with the responsibility of going on Facebook to alerting everybody that we voted.
I was having these and other disjointed thoughts late Tuesday night when I was finishing up our primary coverage. The election part, not Facebook. I voted, I don’t need to prove that to you.
However, this isn’t necessarily about the coverage itself. The coverage aspect is fairly boring, truth be told. Unless it’s a major election, we spend a lot of time staring at the Minnesota Secretary of the State’s website as results come in.
It’s a numbers game and I believe by now you all know my feelings on numbers. They’re evil and no matter what smart people say, there is no place for them in the this world and they certainly do not have a place being combined with letters to figure out angles.
Sure some reporters are busy placing the significance behind those numbers, but that’s not me. I’m busy placing the significance behind how I’m going to make it work on the page, constantly challenging myself to do it without swearing.
I’m an artist (pronounced ar-teest to get the full definition of the word as well as the full level of pretentiousness) and so I’m busy creating as I finish laying out the page.
In this case, our local race didn’t really require a whole lot of work to that end and while I got out of the office later than usual, it really wasn’t that difficult. Our two reporters, Michael Stoll and Hannah Yang, did the hard stuff — crunching the numbers, contacting candidates, fending off my texts asking where they are at.
Rather, it was what was coming the next morning that I wasn’t looking forward to.
You see, I have three alarm clocks, one of which I don’t even bother setting because the other two will inevitably go off first, anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m., turning waking up into some sort of game or, perhaps more to the point, a trial.
Buster, our delightful handful from the Mower County Humane Society, and Nemi, our boisterous rescue from behind Walmart, have an extraordinary awareness of when they feel we should be up, regardless of our own intentions of sleeping in until — 8 a.m.
Regardless, after a late night, I finally went to bed only to wake up what felt like 10 minutes later to the first assault on my rest. A questioning squeak from the side of my bed in the form of a “meow.”
Buster’s cry, despite how massive he is, often tends to sound more like a kitten, yet somehow cuts through the silence. Maybe at this point, I’m waiting for it, subconsciously expecting it so when I hear it I just try really hard to play dead.
It’s the best way really, and on some level I think he gets it, even after his experiments of knocking things off the dresser and then staring at me.
I’ll give him this, he’s smarter than what I give him credit for. Or, I suppose, I just think it’s kind of adorable, but I’m not looking for adorable at this point in the morning. I’m looking for, “Go away you mangy furball on legs.”
For the most part, he does after awhile. Usually he will just go out in the living room, lay down and act like his life is over. Good for him on acceptance of situation.
Nemi on the other hand, for as tiny as she is, is a holy terror on four legs. She’s got the subtle nature of train through a monastery. I will first hear the scramble from the kitchen floor, followed by the stampede through the living room and ending with a pounce on the bed and the scurrying about that ultimately wakes me up with a snap.
She jumps on my feet, her little claws digging impossibly through the thick comforter. She rams her head into my face and hands, has licked my face, and where Buster’s meow is questioning, her’s is a bark or screech that tears at the silence. It’a a real test of how much I love cats and enjoy having them around.
Don’t worry, yes I still care for my cats. I have no intention of dropping them off at the humane society, no matter how much they test me.
The cats, not the humane society. There is currently a good-natured investigation into how much the humane society knew about Buster’s true personality other than the solid sales job Buster gave us on visits before adopting him.
Right now, Nemi is sitting comfortably on her tree, looking out the window — or watching TV as we call it.
Buster … where is Buster? Oh oh.