Well then. An unpleasantly busy morning.

I wrote a little of this earlier and posted it to the federated universe earlier, but then I pretty immediately deleted the post. Then more things happened. So this post was too long for mastodon (let’s ignore the fact that the instance I’m on allows very long posts). It’s mastodlong.

Last night the cat woke me up just after midnight. Not super unusual to be woken up by the cat at a terrible hour. Midnight is a little unusual, but I’d gone to bed earlier than normal, so I don’t blame her. I guess what I do blame her for is that it seemed like the only reason she woke me up was because she wanted someone to watch her eat five bites of food. I went back to bed and pretty promptly fell back asleep. Didn’t even bother turning my bedtime audiobook back on.

Then the cat woke me up again around three, three-thirty. This time, she wanted someone to watch her drink a bunch of water from the bowl. That required going all the way downstairs, because she doesn’t very much like drinking from the bowl we keep for her upstairs. That sort of woke me up, so I didn’t go back to sleep. I sat at my desk and put on some trash television program. Ideally, that would be where this story ends. Not much of a story. I like it that way.

Unfortunately, and yes, unfortunately for me, at around four, four-thirty I heard what at first sounded like regular shouting outside. I live pretty close to where I think a lot of college aged folks live, and I have some terrible neighbors, so shouting isn’t terribly uncommon. At first I tried to ignore it. After a very, very short while, maybe one minute, two minutes, it became apparent that the screaming was just one person. It was one person screaming for help. I delayed very briefly to make sure I wasn’t imagining things – which, if you think about it, you really can’t ever be sure of – and I dressed, got in the car, and drove around the block to see if I could see anyone in need of assistance. Fortunately, as I drove by the houses that are behind-ish mine, I saw a car idling in a driveway and a handful of people across the street who I heard talking about the situation. I carried on home, satisfied that no one needed help that only I could provide. Lovely. Back home, dilly dally around for a bit, think about sleep.

Instead I opted for coffee. Six-ish rolls around. The coffee hits and races through me. I’m sat toilet and the cat, who followed me into the bathroom, has a look about her. She needs a wee. No problem, she often relieves herself down the bathtub drain - kinda gross, but what’re you gonna do? I finish up, let the cat out of the bathroom, but then have to blow my nose. So I go back into the bathroom to wash my hands again. Fine, the cat is happily drinking water. When I finish drying my hands, I notice the cat is no longer at the bowl of water. Where has this little devil gone? My first thought is that she’s gone into the downstairs room where we keep a litter box for her. I was right. She’s in there. But what is she doing? She’s peeing, of course! In the litter box? Well no, it wouldn’t be much of a story if she were! Three feet from the litter box, just onto the floor. She did not have her wee in the bathtub as previously thought. So I clean that up. Then I clean the downstairs and upstairs litter boxes. Then I take out the trash.

I’ve washed my hands so many times in the last 7ish hours that they look and feel like February hands.

I know I’m forgetting something, but I’ve forgotten it, so have a nice life, bye.