No, no, not me – it’s the cat that’s senile.

Our cat, Missy, is 19 years old (maybe that’s 18, but according to my recollection and the veterinarian’s records, she’s 19). She is a small calico, and, up until recently, of sweet temperament. She put up with being boy-handled for many years, as this, the earliest picture of her I have yet found, attests.

We spent many long years training Missy to expect her canned-food “treat” for the day to be delivered early in the morning. Alarm rings, stumble to the kitchen, turn on the coffee pot, feed the cat while you wait for the life-restoring dark brown beverage to burble through the filter.

Even on weekends we rose early. When the boys were small, they lived on the sun clock, and as they grew older, there were weekend activities that drove us up and out of the house.

The first flaw in these years and years of rigorous training revealed itself after hubby and I retired and the boys were grown and gone away. Finally, we could experience the luxury of lying in bed until we were good and ready to rise – no job to go to, no children to transport, no one to answer to except ourselves. Ha!

The cat was still on the clock – is still on the clock. Early, early in the morning she jumps up on the bed, waiting for the first change in breathing, the first flicker of an eyelid. On the first signal, she pounces with an in-your-face, fish-breath demand. “Meow!” Translation: “Feed me. Now!”

This we could almost live with. At least she waited until she saw some sign of awakening. But that has all changed.

Several months ago, Missy decided that 4:30 a.m. is breakfast time, whether we are awake or not. She no longer waits for the telltale signs of her humans returning to consciousness. She starts her campaign in the kitchen, wailing and yelling her way down the hallway to the bedroom, into the room and up on the bed. Sometimes she can be put off if I hide beneath the quilts, but these times grow less frequent.

If her yowling doesn’t evoke a satisfactory response, she goes on the offensive, using her I’ll-sit-on-your-head-and-yowl technique. Very offensive, since she’s now so deaf she has to up the volume to hear herself, and she’s never been declawed. A screaming cat digging her claws into your scalp is a very effective waker-upper.

Perhaps she’s not liking her always-available kibble as much, we think. So we begin to give her an afternoon snack, some tuna or chicken, thinking to fill the gap until breakfast time. For a few months, this seems to mitigate the morning misery. She becomes habituated to the late afternoon snack. When one walks into the kitchen, she materializes under one’s feet, looking for her snack. I don’t know how she does it – she doesn’t appear to hear much of anything these days. Maybe it’s the change in air pressure when I open the refrigerator door? Maybe it’s magic?

She begins to beg for food at the table. We’ve never fed her at the dinner table. She’s not even allowed on laps at dinner. But she seems to forget this prohibition. She’d happily climb right up on the table and eat from your plate. Ask our dinner guests from Saturday night!



About two weeks ago, her morning tirade escalated. She is loud, vocal, persistent. There is no putting her off. She is in-your-face and on-your-case insistent. I swear she has activated a Siamese gene or two; her vocalizations resound with that drawling Siamese yowl. Some mornings she manages to wait until 4 a.m. before she starts her relentless campaign. You’d never think it, looking at this sweet picture of Missy napping on her nice, warm corn kitty. Actually, she’s passed out on her nice, warm corn kitty, completely worn out by her prowling and yowling.

It’s so bad I’ve taken to calling her “The Yowling Poop Machine.”

We decide to take defensive measures. We close the bedroom door. She still howls and yowls, and eventually one of us gives in and goes trudging off in the dark to feed the beast. But at least she’s not sitting on my head.

I do wonder if she’s senile, if she’s losing those few small threads that tied her existence as a domesticated feline to our human schedules. So far the changes in sleep-wake cycle are the only consistent marker. She still moves well, grooms consistently, eats well (!), doesn’t appear to be lost or bewildered, interacts with humans. But we’re seeing her return to her feral side.

Earlier this week, hubby dutifully got up to feed her. She hung around to see the plate put on the kitchen floor, then trotted off into another room to fetch her latest trophy, a little house finch. The finch was alive, but petrified, and missing quite a few feathers, to judge from the carpet. Missy was so proud. Time to start locking the cat door at night.

Earlier this summer she caught a baby rabbit. This from a cat who hasn’t caught anything larger than a Sphinx moth or a Mormon cricket in years!

So I guess our upcoming visit to the vet will include a few questions. Oh, and an amazing thing I discovered in the tubes of the Internet – you can buy your pet a Senility pet bowl? No kidding. Click here.

Breaking: first yowl this morning at 3 a.m.

