“You know your life is messed up when the only reason you wake up in the morning is to get milk and sit in a cardboard box.”
“Oh yeah? You can’t be talking! You ‘sharpen’ your claws on a rattan laundry basket when you’re declawed, and you ran away like Public Enemy Number 1 was chasing you just because your human exhaled.” This is how it normally works around here. Sunshine hisses at me, and I retaliate. This time, I was on offense.
“Sure, sure. Go ahead and call me a freak—”
“FREAK!!” she shrieked in a loud meow, her lime-green eyes laughing.
“Not literally. My point is, at least I move. You are the laziest feline I’ve ever seen.” I walked off nonchalantly with my tail in the air. Then, I noticed something. My human’s dad was waking up! This could only mean one thing—treats! Sunshine walks briskly into the bathroom, and I follow, feeling, you know, that freezing-tile-in-the-early-morning feeling? Yeah, that feeling under my rose-colored pads.
Sunshine yelled, “Hey middle-aged manservant! Where’s my milk?” to the father, who probably just heard, “MEEEEEOOOWW!” Humans and their lack of auditory capabilities. So anyways, there we were, getting a little desperate because our treats hadn’t yet been served to us on silver platters. Our only option was to follow him around meowing like banshees, but what the heck, it was for a good cause, so why not? As I surveyed my territory, scents—some pleasant, some offending—got caught in my nose. The first was the stench of that white cream he rubs on his face, only to scrape it off with a piece of plastic with bar-shaped claws on one end. Another was the aroma of that blue liquid the mother puts in the clothes-spinning apparatus to make the clothing nice and soft for us. The last and most infuriating was the warm, sunlit scent of Sunshine. How dare she rub up against my property and try to claim it for her own! I had to show her who was boss, so I walked all around the counter with the bowl and the golden water machine on top of it, narrowly avoiding a blob of the minty gel he scrapes around his mouth with a small brush. We then proceeded in following him downstairs, where Sunshine was reduced to begging loudly for her daily splash of milk, and I had to herd the human into the proper treat-serving position by running around him in circles until he set the treats down. Finally!
After this exchange, we go our separate ways, but not without engaging in another verbal scuffle. “Another boring day in the life of Sunshine. Step 1: Win the loudest meowing contest while begging for a liquid dairy product. Step 2: Sit in your stupid cardboard box for the rest of the day.” I was winning, but not for long. Sunshine was passionate about that box. Here comes the old “box diatribe.”
“It’s my box and it’s my life. Do I tell you how to live yours, Peaches? Well, I should, but still! You’re clearly as obsessed with sitting on the heater vents as I am with Boxie.” She flicked her ear at me. I didn’t react.
“A name for a box. Really?” My peaches-and-cream fur bristled with annoyance and a feeling of superiority as I waited for the right timing for the rest of my comeback. “Well, your Boxie is blocking my air vent. So I’m perfectly justified in doing this every day.” With that, I promptly nipped her ear and leaped into the box. Victory was mine! Of course, now she would probably complain to my human and I’d have to walk all the way upstairs to win her admiration with excessive purring and a “cutie look.” But hey, that’s what happens when we start the routine I like to call the Early Morning Meow.