dawn and dusk

Every night Scooter and Sayang like to sleep with us in our bedroom, and sometimes Slinky too. But Scooter has the annoyingly endearing habit of waking us up in the early morning because he wants to be fed.

His waking method is to climb atop one of us near our face, kissing and purring and walking around our heads. This can take place as early as 4 a.m. This despite his supper only a mere 4 hours ago at midnight or so. Pushing him away does not help, he is very persistent. Placing their breakfasts in their feeding area the night before helps only if he wasn't in our room the night before. But he enjoys sleeping in the room at night with us; in fact, last night I remember closing the room door with him outside but he had managed to push the door open anyway to come in and sleep.

Our two other cats are more patient, waiting for us to wake up instead. Slinky usually waits for us either at the foot of the bed or at our doorstep. Sayang who is usually not hungry just sleeps until we wake up. She only likes us to be awake so she can talk with us and cuddle her, more than she is happy for us to feed her, she hardly eats breakfast. If we sleep for too long, she is likely to greet us with a 'good morning' meow.

Cats, especially those with a very strong hunting instinct - big ears, black eye liner stains - are prone to being active at dawn and dusk, because this is when prey is visible enough yet vulnerable due to the dim light in which cats are excellent in navigating around.

Which explains why I am awake at 6.30 in the morning even though I only need to wake up in the late morning today. Cats, our natural alarm clock...