Small hours

Each weekday morning I am the firs to rise. It’s now 6:30. I’ve showered, fed the cats and the dogs, let the dogs outside, and made coffee. Mentally I’ve rehearsed the day. Physically, I sip my coffee to gear up for the next ten hours or so.

Our house takes on a different atmosphere at this early hour. Silence presses heavily against my years. Stillness covers everything. And I am the only one taking this in. I hear the house shift in the wind before the furnace grumbles from below me.

In a matter of minutes, the house will come alive. Kristie will be up getting ready for work. That means waking Koko (turning on her bedside lamp and rustling her shoulder until she cocks an incredibly large brown eye open and smiles). That means flipping on the main light in Casey’s room and calling his name several times before he grunts an affirmative that he is awake before falling back to sleep.

The cats, full of energy now, stalk each other. Our kitten, Lucky, is like that freshman I saw in the hallway last week - all nervous energy. She moves like a squirrel - all sudden jerks and leaps. Einstein, our 20 pound 3 year old cat, is much like that senior - king of the roost. He sits atop Koko’s backpack waiting for Lucky to come to him. And sure enough it works. He snatches her and uses his immense girth to tumble onto her, but she uses her speed to scamper away.

I often wonder what they do when we’re gone. Then I think as Einstein, bored with Lucky’s tactics, hurls himself up onto the table and burrows into my back pack, maybe they think the same thing when we leave.

The clock reads 6:45. Time to dress and get everyone up. Time to put some life back into this house.