In the small hours of the morning, when the sun has not yet risen, they come out. Testing the air with tiny noses and furtive paws, small eyes alert for any movement of bug or predator. Sniffing out the best nuts and leaves and flowers and seeds, the mice and voles venture forth. The squirrels awaken and all manner of wee life resume the search for food and water and a way to live through the day.

So it should come as no surprise to me that our cat (Miss Fuzzy Pants or MFP) should come to me, as attuned as she is to the ebb and flow of life, at 4:30 in the morning. She is hoping that I will arise, fly out of bed, to do her bidding. Which is to take her outside to find and stalk all those small lives busily making the rounds of our backyard. Or at least failing that, fix her breakfast.

Why not just let her out, you might say. She is weak and other cats beat on her. So she never goes outside unchaperoned.

At the age that I am, it seems that sleep, good sleep, comes hard to me. I do my best sleeping, the most sound and replenishing sleeping, between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. So I am loathe to get out of bed at 4:30 a.m. Especially knowing that, once up, I will not easily get back to sleep.

So I lie there, doing my best to ignore the protestations, gentle as they are, from MFP. I roll onto my back from lying on my side. She climbs onto my chest and sits, staring into my face, sometimes putting her nose on the tip of my nose. I scratch her cheeks and under her chin. I stoke down the length of her body. I rub the top of her head. Eventually, she purrs.

It’s a quiet purr, more felt than heard. It rumbles in my chest and helps to calm me, as I am sure it does her. For it is not long after that, that she lies down upon my chest and we both find peace and slumber.

Upon awaking for the day, usually minutes after 6:00 a.m., the first thing I do is to make breakfast for MFP. I prepare it the way she likes it best. I take the can from the refrigerator. I pour boiling water into her stainless steel bowl to warm it. I pour out most of the water, leaving only enough to make a fine mush of the canned food. I put a large spoonful of the food into the bowl and stir it around until it is a consistency that can be easily licked up.

Miss Fuzzy Pants does not like to take great gobs of pate into her mouth and chew them into submission. She prefers to lick up her food with dainty little laps of her tongue. It can take her minutes to eat a thimbleful of food. And then she will walk away from her bowl and lick her lips as if she has just eaten a feast.

But she is not done. I pick up the bowl and scrape the food back into a pile in the middle of the bowl and, following her wherever she has gone, I set the bowl before her once more and she begins again to lick up her food.

If, at the end of this second feasting, I set the bowl before her again, she refuses it with a turn of her head and a shake of her paw, then I know for certain she will not eat anything more for a couple of hours. She never eats much at any one time, and so I must offer her food many times a day.

She is small and old and underweight. She has an overactive thyroid gland for which we medicate her twice daily. While the medication slows her thyroid and makes it possible for her to get more benefit from her food than if she did not get the medication, it also tends to decrease her appetite. It’s a catch 22 of sorts that we have more or less come to terms with.

I love this cat with all my heart and soul. There is nothing I would not do for her … except maybe get out of bed at 4:30 in the morning and go out into the cold crepuscular dawn and chase mice.

Top photo and bottom quote courtesy of Crayon and Country Living Magazine respectively. Middle photo is of Miss Fuzzy Pants on our kitchen counter.