A night in the life...

Akari being good.

Akari is our white hellion cat from Fukushima who recently delights in keeping me (and possibly our neighbor, my principal) awake all night long.

A typical evening begins with the running of the cat.  This is an attempt to use every surface area of the house (including doors and walls) to wear Akari out.  Once she gives up, she gets her last serving of food and we retire to bed.

Next: futon circling time.  This involves thudding around the futons multiple times meowing until the magic number of circles has been completed to allow her to attain sleepiness.  She typically prefers to begin the night with A, but only if a carefully orchestrated blanket lift occurs that she is willing to crawl under.  This process alone can take up to a half hour, with both of us occasionally grabbing her and trying to stuff her forcefully under the blankets, consequently a. stopping the meowing and b. enabling sleep.

After about 2-3 hours of sleep, depending on when we went to bed, Akari decides it's time to beg.  Akari has 4 levels of begging she employs when asking for food in the middle of the night, none of which she uses on A because he either is truly asleep or just pretends he is. (grrrr).

Level 1. The sit and stare

This is level one of begging.  It's actually kind of cute.  Akari sits on my chest silently and waits for me to open my eyes.  When I do, I am centimeters away from her nose, as she sits and stares silently, willing me with the power of her pupils to do as she wishes.

Level 2. Loud meowing
This is level two, and arguably the most problematic due to our afore-mentioned proximity to my principal. This level can be combined with

any of the other 4 levels and consists of two simple steps: 1. meow 2. loudly.

Level 3. Picking loudly at miscellaneous objects

I think Akari enjoys this level the most.  It involves finding loose objects within a 2 foot radius of my head to pick at, crash into, and/or bat around.  Bonus points for actually hitting my head.

You will pay attention to me...

Level 4. Attack!

This level is not for sissies.  It involves stealth, fast reflexes and persistence as she must identify and target parts of my anatomy that are near the surface of the blanket cocoon I wrap myself in.  A simple paw swipe or nip does not suffice, this level involves full on gnawing of whatever piece of flesh she can get her few remaining teeth into.  This level has an almost 100% success rate for obtaining food.

Christmas or Hanukkah... one of you is going down.

Bonus Level:
Even if all 4 previous levels have resulted in Akari obtaining food, sometimes she is just bored.  This causes a bonus level--repeating levels 2-4 so obnoxiously that I have to remove her (and me) from the bedroom and sleep on the couch.  Because the principal's bedroom and ours are right next to each other, this separation hopefully keeps my sleeping principal from waking up.  In the summer, we also close the windows to keep Akari from waking up the whole neighborhood, which makes Akari happy because she gets to lick off our sweat.

So if I ever appear ridiculously sleep deprived--don't worry, appearances are not deceiving.  I am bloody tired, and it's all Akari's fault.  Someday we will live in a giant castle where Akari can meow her head off and no one will hear her...muahhhhahahahaha....

This blog post is so embarrassing...