Wake up, it’s cat o’clock
The worried, hurried wee beastie finds calm comfort in the crook of the cave
Under your sheet
The purr under the whirr of the fan tells you the predictability of the cat’s next move
Has increased a hundred-fold
As it unsurprisingly curls up inside the cavity made by your own curl

And then, at ten past cat, it’s time to get moving again
Until you make the mistake of sitting up to see human time and offer up a lap,
a trap
For that is now where the wee lion sits triumphantly for eternity
And you, the conquered lap, dare not move or even shift position,
Save to lift up the cover where there’s a bit of sick,
a hairball
to come out in the wash
to be done
in the day ahead,
around two hundred past cat
when it deigns give thee freedom again
as it seeks its prey
in the food dish
you’re about to fill
on reduced sleep
because you awoke
at cat o’clock
to offer a place
quiet and calm
beneath the sheets
so the wee beastie wouldn’t climb up the headboard
to inflict DEATH FROM ABOVE
in an unwelcome shower of fur and claw
right
on
your
HEAD

No, it’s better this way –
Waking up early to share a tame time with a tiny tiger,
The slight purr my ample compensation as the clock reaches cat-thirty

The sun finally rises –
The cat shifts a bit
Yawns at the upstart star
Then does a bit of backside licking,
Jealous of all the millennia we’ve wasted on worshipping some dumb old sun when
CATS are
right
here
now
and are desirous of the supplications we offer in the form of steady laps
and tunafish

The trick is to never completely want the cat to stay there,
Because in that precise moment,
A scratch afflicts the thighs where lithe legs leapt away,
cat o’clock over and done ’till another day –
Or whenever you sit down to do some work

Cat o’clock is forever and never, foolish human!
Why tell time by the dumb old sun, it’s boring!
Yawn in rebellion and lick your feet in freedom!
And then put some food in the dish, that the indoor hunt may begin and end

But for now, it’s cat-forty-five and I’m mostly happy with my lot,
With the purrer perched atop my pelvis…
I’ve got things to do,
so
of course,
I won’t be able to do them until I don’t want to do them
and cat o’clock yields to another hour my boss recognizes

Another yawn assures me I’m doing the right thing

I fall in love all over again

And then suddenly, it’s the miaow of doom
And I have to do something about that empty food bowl, chop chop!