Chirp....mew....meow....MEOW.....

It is a fact that no one in our house arose earlier than Jonesy! It didn't matter if we were getting up at 5am, because he would be wide awake just before we were. How did I know that? In the winter I would 'come to' in the mornings and realise it was time to wake up, I would also be aware of a cat perched on my chest.......or on the pillow above my head....or right close up next to me. This cat....Jonesy....would be purring like a train rumbling through the station. Loud does not describe the sound! The magnitude of an earthquake maybe! If Jonesy was on my chest and I opened my eyes, it would be to find his nose about half a centimetre away from mine. His eyes would stare into mine and his purr would raise the roof. He was VERY happy that one of us was awake. Of course as he got older he would dribble sometimes...not a pleasant experience to wake up to if he was half a centimetre away from my nose, I can tell you. No matter if we didn't wake up until the alarm went off,  because Jonesy will still be perched rigidly upright somewhere close to one of us, wide awake.

In the summer it was different! Dawn would break at some ungodly hour and the birds would start to sing. That was Jonesy's cue to be awake....even if we were not! It was light...the world was alive....he wanted to be out.....NOW. There would be a tentative chirp at first....we would ignore that. The chirp would change to a mew....we would shuffle and turn over, and ignore that. The mew would change into a meow.....a plaintive meow. We would snuggle under the covers and try to ignore that. It didn't work! Jonesy's meow would, second by second, rise up the decibel scale until it was, indeed, impossible to do anything but get up and let him out. We were fortunate in that we had a flat roof over our sun lounge, below our window, and as my husband slept on the side of the bed next to the window he was designated 'window opener'. He would grumble, believe me he would grumble. My husband that is! Jonesy would bound out the window and we would attempt to drop off to sleep again. Which we always did...only to be woken up when Jonesy would leap back in the window. The first warning of the impending four legged creature would be the thud as he landed back on the window sill. If that didn't wake you up then the leap from the window sill onto your stomach/back/leg/body part would. It didn't matter that Jonesy could jump onto the foot of the bed. He always landed on my husband...who would shout, so Jonesy would then leap onto me. The 'oof' bursting from our mouths as he leapt onto each of us probably would be funny to hear, except we were usually in shock! Throughout his whole life Jonesy never waived in his routine, come winter or summer, until this last year. I suppose he was getting older, and stiffer, and the effort of leaping up to the window sill was too much for him to bother with, but he still always managed to wake up before us!