There has been much eating, sleeping and cleaning of house and body. Life is good, and it’s pizza day, which makes it even better.

Now let’s talk about the cats.

I have discovered how to get the little brats to be affectionate. Allow an empty food bowl to remain empty.

I fed them yesterday morning, more than their regular daily allotment, but by nightfall, that was all gone. I meant to put a little more food in their bowls after we had dinner, but I fell asleep. When I awoke this morning (still on the couch), I had cats all over me. They weren’t just laying there sleeping either. No, they were rolling around, purring, and begging in the usual adorable ways, and I suspect they had been at it for a while before I became conscious enough to notice. They followed me to the kitchen when I went to make the coffee, and both of them kept rubbing against my legs and then running to the very empty bowls. I ignored them. It isn’t as if they were in any way, shape, or form actually in danger of starving.

After getting Lin off to work, I poured about a half cup of food into each bowl, so I could go back to sleep for a while in peace.

I was allowed a few hours of peaceful sleeping, but as soon as those bowls were empty again, I found myself with two squirming cats on top of me being general pests. Now the rolling around, purring and quiet mewing is easy to ignore and sleep through. I do, after all, sleep with another human being on a regular basis who snores, tosses and turns, steals the covers and hogs the bed. Somehow, I manage to sleep through all of that, so a combined twenty-five pounds or so of cats is no challenge to my ability to remain asleep if I so choose. But they have found one method guaranteed to wake me up … staring and face touching.

Both of them will find locations near my face that allows them to stare, unblinking directly into my closed eyes at just about whisker length away, and then they take turns gently placing a paw on my nose or in my mouth. The first few times they do it, I usually just open one eye far enough to see four huge eyes staring right back at me. They keep at it though … the staring and face touching … until I can’t ignore it and have to wake up. As soon as both my eyes are fully open, they pour on the cute at unimaginable levels. Really, these cats are “cute” professionals.

Well, they may have gotten me out of bed this morning far earlier than I would have gotten out of bed had they not been pests, but I am not putting any more food in those bowls! They have had half their food for the day, and if I give them more now, they will only finish that off and demand more later. I have been giving in to their precious demands too much the last few weeks, and it is starting to show in the form of overly-tubby cat bellies and a large bag of food that is becoming empty at much too quick a rate. They’ll get more food at dinner and not a moment before!

Meanwhile, they are now my very best friends EVER. No matter where I am or what I am doing, I have two cats a few inches away entertaining me with precious cat antics, licking my toes, or in my lap purring madly … all interspersed with trips to the food bowls to check their still empty state. I am rather enjoying all the attention. In fact, I am enjoying it so much, I think splitting the daily feeding into two allotments will now be the norm. Besides, they need to learn that an empty bowl does not mean an empty stomach. Naturally, they do not agree with the concept and seem to believe that an empty bowl means they are going to die within the hour from lack of food. As if these cats even know what hunger is. They are both spoiled rotten with treats and over-fed on a daily basis, and their increasing girth is evidence of that fact.

Well, I am not giving in to the cuteness overload. Maybe by dinner time they will know what an actual hunger pain is … provided I can resist giving them treats for putting on such a great show today for my benefit.