I honestly had no idea that a cat had so many life-and-death jobs to do around the house… It’s really a wonder I made it this far without a cat around. 🙂
Marshal’s day starts the same time mine does; about 5am. Immediately Marshal takes it upon himself to make sure I’m up to speed by weaving about my feet as I stagger to the bathroom to get ready for work… This feline-powered obsticle course ensures that I’m awake and coordinated enough to not kill myself in the shower.
Now Marshal has to get up on the counter in the bathroom and inspect everything from my toothpaste to my deodorant to make sure no one has replaced them with something dangerous. From here his job is to sit outside the shower and periodically meow – I am expected to meow back so that he knows all is well and if I don’t he sets up with quite the caterwauling and will bang on the shower doors till I make some kind of acknowledgment.
From here his job is to thoroughly inspect the clothing I’ve laid out for the day while I dry off. I gather that the shedding all over the clothing serves as a warning to all the bad things in the world that I’m protected by a cat and messing with me means they’ll be answering to him.
So we move on to the cat-maintenance portion of the morning where I gather up all the cat toys, put them in the unused cat bed, and take his food and water bowl into the kitchen for a cleaning. During this Marshal sits on the edge of the kitchen sink and makes sure I don’t drown while cleaning his food bowl. Now I offer up the day’s food choices and he selects one, the food and water bowl is placed back on his mat, and I commence the cleaning of the cat box… While I sift litter Marshal has to make sure nothing is hiding in the trash bag by near-mutilation of the plastic device.
With cat-maintenance over I get a chance to check my email, so I power up the laptop and remove Marshal from the keyboard. I get a glass of orange juice and my vitamins while the machine boots and return to remove Marshal from the keyboard. Now I place the glass of OJ on the desk and remove Marshal from the keyboard so I can sit down in my nice office chair and remove Marshal from the keyboard… Once seated Marshal takes up residence on my lap or shoulder and makes sure I don’t do anything stupid on the Internet.
And this is how things stay for about 45 minutes till I leave for work. As I put my socks on Marshal ensures there’s nothing in my shoes, then helps me by making sure I tie them correctly by untying them several times.
I’m not sure what Marshal does during the day, but it must be important and exhausting because I always find him curled up and asleep under the covers of my bed when I get home.
If I stopped to get something to eat on the way home, Marshal inspects it (and occasionally samples it) for safety – otherwise he sits on the counter next to the stove and makes sure the ingredients are fresh and that I don’t burn the house down or something.
The rest of the night he alternates between tearing around the house to entertain me, sitting on the couch next to me and watching TV, or does this ninja-like trick of replacing the mouse with his fuzzy head while I’m playing whatever game I’m playing on the computer.
At precisely 9:45pm he sits in the hallway to the bedrooms and meows to let me know it’s time for bed.
From here it’s pretty much the inverse of the morning routine; he makes sure nothing in the bathroom is out of place, tries to trip me several times on the way to bed, then curls up next to my head and purrs me to sleep.
Once I’m passed out he usually returns to the living room for a few hours and watches TV with ZeZe, then at midnight when ZeZe heads for bed he returns to my bed, worms under the covers and becomes a fuzzy heater for the rest of the night.
And that appears to be a cat’s life…