Taking back porch

On any given Sunday you can be sure to find me burrowed in my bed of hand crafted quilts and pillows, cat hair included. This is the one day a week I can sleep in and enjoy lying still with no where to go. The occasional bitch slap awake from Mamba is to be expected any time I sleep in past 7am. But on Sundays even she enjoys the lazy mood in the apartment. We' e had this routine down for months now, and until last Sunday it was uninterrupted bliss!



It started before the sun came up... that high pitched chirp. A chirp so loud and so piercing that it woke me from a dead sleep. I love sleep like I love members of my family. Waking someone from said deep sleep, is punishable by pillow thrown at your face... hard. However, this was no time to whip my pillow out the balcony doors and into the tree... no, no time at all. So instead I chose three very unlady like words to string together and yelp the phrase a few times back mocking the small beady eyed branch clinger. But this was not nearly enough. The bird chirped louder, and more frequently forcing my two feet to land flat on the ground.



I had a plan, a dream if you will, that my next counter strike would be both rewarding and entertaining. I caught Mamba looking out the glass doors with the same furrowed eye brows and disapproving look. So I called her down off the bed and slowly slide the slider open to the balcony and let her loose! Her cat like instincts kicked in right away. She slithered along the side of the wall.. she ducked down under the lounge chair.. she.. she hid. Ok, so her cat like instincts were those of a pampered house cat more than the jungle beast I had in my dream..but I still had hope. "Stalking her prey" I thought. I walked away to leave her to her business of bird scaring.



I went about my morning brushing my teeth, cleaning up last nights feast by the comfy chair, and washed my face. I could still hear the bird, and if at all possible it was getting louder. I glanced back to see Mamba run into my room, and behind my legs. She was literally hiding behind my ankles now from a bird! A bird! This was not only against nature but against house rules.

I would have none of this.



I plucked her up into my arms and marched her out onto the balcony where the bird sat, perched and all too full of himself on the railing. I didn't stop "rawwwwr"ing while waving my cat in the air at the tree until I realized I was doing so with an audience. What you've never seen a woman in her nightie shaking her cat in the morning air before? Common people, get real.