Since she can’t be trusted to wake up and feed us on her own schedule (today is proof of that!) I feel I’m the only one to help. Digi helps sometimes, but mostly it’s me. Here is our routine – let me know if you have any suggestions because clearly something backfired this morning!!

4:30am – we start introducing her to the idea that we are hungry and it’s close to the time she should get up. If I did a lot of sleeping the day before then I’m usually extra focused at this time. For example, last night I did my excited growl to communicate with her “My tummy is starting to rumble!” That and there was a june bug trying to break into her window. I was just protecting her.

Digi likes to get involved at this time by playing with mom’s toes through the blankets. Clearly they are sticking up for a reason (for us to play with!) so she just takes her up on that.

6:30am – since she hasn’t showed signs of getting up yet we get a little more serious here. I (tarra) will lightly sharpen my claws on the side of this big brown box that has smaller boxes of clothes in it. She seems concerned about that so this is a guaranteed way to get some attention. Sometimes she has a bottle sitting right next to her bed that shoots water, so on those mornings when she shoots at me I switch my tactic… I then know her eyes have at least opened so I’ll climb up on the bed and walk up to her face and talk to her politely. I say “Hey mom, our tummies are still rumbling. Can you please get up and give us our breakfast?” … She doesn’t always respond to that. Or sometimes she responds with a “oh good morning” and then pets me. She’s so off base! I mean, I love pets and belly scratches as much as the next amazing kitty, but that’s not really what I’m looking for right now. I need meat muffins stat.

7:30am – now things are getting serious if she hasn’t woken up yet. And since things have gotten serious, I get serious. The gloves come off. The fists are flying. It’s go time.

I (again, Tarra) sit next to her bed and ask again for our breakfast. At this point, I am not concerned about the volume of my voice. Nope. She has had many opportunities to get up and has ignored it, so I need to be more forceful, clearly. She will usually stir and roll over so then I jump up and do the same in her face. Digi has started to do this because I’ve been able to get it into her head that if there are 2 of us pleading for food it is just mean to not get up.

Sometimes the talking STILL doesn’t work, so at this point  I start doing more things to get her attention. My favorite one lately is to push everything off of her night stand really slowly. That way it makes noise as I push the pin thingys she puts in her hair and the dangly things she wears around her neck across the top. So far I haven’t resorted to pushing the glass of water off, but that might be the next thing I try. Digi will do the same thing on top of that wood box of boxes I mentioned earlier.

If that doesn’t work I’ll go and grab some toys and bring them to her to play with. My favorite one lately is the one that chirps. She seems to react to that one almost instantly! And usually if I can get her to see how skinny I am while playing then she feels bad and gets up. It doesn’t always work but if I drop them by her face or play with them by her toes, I have a pretty good shot.

Sometimes I’m impatient, so on those days I decide I’m going to get some exercise while I wake mom up! I’ve often got energy to burn so it’s a win-win move. So for this I will hop up in the window by her bed, tap on it, growl, check to see if she’s looking, run over to her, meow in her face, jump off the bed, run under the bed, jump back up into the window and repeat. This one usually only takes about 3 or 4 laps before she throws the covers off and gets up. Smart mom!

Occasionally she’ll get up, feed us and go back to bed. This is the best of both worlds! We get fed and then we can all cuddle in bed since we always crash soon after breakfast from a food coma. I don’t know why she doesn’t do this EVERY morning!!

Now I’m not sure what happened THIS morning. I was only at the 4:30am drill and she apparently decided that we were not allowed to stay in her room so she shooed us out and closed the door. This has happened before but usually if I just run my paws up and down the door enough she will open it back up and let us in. Not the case today!! She is still in bed and we are STARVING! So if anyone has any suggestions of more things we can try, please let us know!!! And if you can come over and give us our meat muffins since our mom is being cruel, we would also appreciate that. Our notebox is DigiTarra@chocolatemooseimages.com.

We’ll just wait here. Withering away.