Cat calling

Small Cat is in dire straits right now. She is in heat and having a lot of trouble with it, most of all because we do not want her to start having babies and, more important, go out of the house and meet very unsuitable boy cats to start off the process. As a result she has spent the past five days and four nights yowling all over the house driving herself and us completely insane and to the point where sleeplessness has gone way past the point of mindlessness. I have never been known to lie in bed in the dark and bellow for quiet – which I have done frequently these past couple of nights. I have never been known to drink coffee of the most instant, machine-produced and ghastly kind – which I have done frequently in the office these past couple of days. And I have never (well, maybe once) been known to fall asleep in mid-sentence during an edit meeting (ok, so I tend to exaggerate sometimes) – which I almost did this morning at work.

It is not that we do not want to help Small Cat. We do. We love the little furball greatly and indulge her every want and whim, including her penchant for playing at all times of day and night, her demand for one special brand of snack biscuits first thing in the morning as we stagger blearily around opening windows and her liking for biting as a mark of her intense affection for us. But this time is not easy for us. She is truly suffering. Her little body goes rigid, her tail skews awkwardly into spirals and she stares fixedly at some spot we cannot see, in her desperate attempt to make demons leave her alone. And she has stunned us with a whole orchestra of new sounds, from her familiar and cheerful chirps and squeaks to loud, low and long growls that send us scurrying about in the gloom trying to find her to provide as much comfort as we can.

As a result of this frantic night-time activity, both Father and I are reduced – or elevated, as the attitude may be – to a state of auto-pilot functioning. I am not sure how it has happened, but I get my sleep – whatever little of it I am able to snatch – between spells of intense yowls of various vocalisation levels, when one is fading into silence and the other still not begun. And when it does start, usually as a series of pathetic squeaks and gentle snorts, I try and rouse myself enough to leap out of bed, run into the living room, locate Small Cat in the dark and quickly grab her and begin the process of soothing before she can wake Father. Of course, I do not know how often he does the same, and has done over the past few days, but when I look into his face in the morning I see how he looks, which sort of closely resembles the way I feel: haggard, deathly, exhausted, bone-crunchingly jet-lagged.

I am hoping that this unfortunate state of being does not last. Most of all, that is does not endure tonight, which would be a blessing of untold proportions. If it does, there is nothing I can do except keep my temper, summon up whatever pathetic store of patience I may have left stored in my sluggish brain and try and soothe both Small Cat through the night and Father during the endless morning. Of course, he has the day-long ordeal of dealing with the furry feline once I have left for work, but his story is one I cannot tell. Meanwhile, if Small Cat is over her moment of crisis – which I profoundly hope is indeed the case – we can all rest, at last, in peace.