Hi there, it’s Mom. I see my cats live in really a happy life, and it is always true for most of cats、I believe. They know the comfortable places where they can get sunlight. They can sleep as much as they want. They know exactly when they can get food. They can play with me and Dad, who are lovestruck by them, until they get tired even if it is in the midnight.
I said it is always true, but one thing is different in case of Zoe. Zoe sits down on the joint and end of the sofa at her ease. She intentionally sleeps on the roof of her dome bed, though inside of it is fluffier. When she plays with her favorite fishing rod toy, I have to make her play in the more difficult situation by entangling the fishing line on the leg of a chair to enhance her hunting instinct. If not doing so, she stops playing and leaves there with a disappointing look.
Zoe has such a stoic girl on the contrary to her cute appearance. Another different thing is that both Zoe and Hugo sleeps at nights unlike most cats who are nocturnal. I wonder whether they are satisfied with their “cat life.”
A day of Zoe and Hugo starts a bit earlier than 5:30am. Dad gets up at 5:30am and prepares their breakfast. He prepares his own breakfast after that. Sometimes Zoe and Hugo get too hungry and wakes him up by jumping on him. Poor Dad. Zoe and Hugo are very active in the morning and eat breakfast voraciously. After Dad leaves home for work, they change the target to me and keep their eyes on me to request playing. They form an encirclement at me who enjoy the morning coffee at the sofa. The encirclement gets smaller and smaller with time, and I start to feel uneasy. Before I finish my coffee I usually make up my mind and start playing with them using the toys.
“OK, children, let’s start!” I stand up and walk to the drawer where I put the toys, their eyes get large. Hugo meows excitedly. Zoe looks in the drawer and chooses her favorite toys. “Today I’m gonna play with this, this, and that…” I move to the playing room with the toys in my hand and sing a song of my original “Zoe, Hugo, let’s go. It’s morning. Let’s go!” This song make them so excited because the sound of “It’s morning [a-sa-da] ” in Japanese is similar to ”Let’s play [a-so-bo].” This means that they understand the word “Let’s play.”
I play with Zoe first every morning, as the vet advised me, because she came to our home earlier then Hugo. I ask Hugo to play by himself in the next room for a while. Zoe likes playing with fishing rod and catching a ball. She is good at catching the ball by jumping. After a while Hugo gets lonely and starts meowing, but I ask him again to wait for a bit more.
By the time when Hugo starts meowing, Zoe finishes playing. When I open the door of the next room, I see Hugo sitting at the back of the door with holding his favorite cat teaser in his mouth. My heart aches every time I see it, and I play with him as much as possible. Zoe sits there and gaze at it.
After playing with them, each of them start to do what they want. I start my job in my office at home. Zoe makes it a rule to rush up to the cat table and continue the breakfast after the playing. When she was a baby, she preferred playing to eating, but now she loves eating. These days Hugo mimics her routine and finish his breadfast.
They then take a nap at their favorite places, but Zoe gets up around 11:00am and wait for lunch, which is given by the automatic feeder. She sits on a bed near the feeder and wait for the lunch time. She is really a stoic girl to wait for lunch for such a long time. But it may be a pleasant time that she can focus her attention on lunch. When the automatic feeder feeds lunch, Zoe rushes to it and start eating.
They spend time in their own way in the afternoon, too. Nowadays they come to my office and take a nap. Zoe sleeps on the top of a bookshelf and Hugo does on a chair besides me. When Hugo does not come to the office Zoe takes a sheet on the chair and sleeps. Sometimes Hugo wakes up and start walking on the keyboard, so I cannot be careless. Neither of them likes to be hugged but they like to be in a same room with me very much.
After 5:00pm, Zoe walks around in a fidget like saying “Where is my dinner?” Yes, dinner time is 6:00pm. When she finds me going to the kitchen, she gets a start on me and wait for dinner. When I prepare their dinner Zoe edges up to my legs and looks on the table by standing up. Hugo does not eat much and he seldom eat dinner at 6:00pm, but around 7:00pm. I weigh their dinner and put it on the dishes of their own, but they do not care which is whose. After preparing their dinner, me and Dad start the own dinner.
After dinner Zoe takes a rest in the wardrobe and Hugo sometimes fawns on me and some other times sleeps in a hammock of the cat tower. At 10:00pm me and Dad move to the bedroom and watch the TV. We decide to sleep in the bedroom altogether so that we can evaluate smoothly at the time of a natural disaster. In order to have Zoe and Hugo in the bedroom, we have a toilet and water server for them. When we move there we bring their midnight meal. I weigh the midnight meal so that the total calories do not exceed the daily calories they should take. When I bring the midnight meal, Zoe comes out of the wardrobe. She is such a cute baby who loves eating!
There are days which they do not want to go to the bedroom. At those times they hide under the sofa to play more. I try to catch them but if I cannot do, I leave the door of the bedroom open so that they can come in when they are ready to sleep. When they were kittens they used to rush around in the bedroom but now they were calm and usually spend time by grooming themselves on their beds.
I usually watch the TV until I become sleepy and Hugo sometimes visits me to fawn on me. He likes to step on meas if I am his “cat Mom.” His steps make me sleepy and I turn off the TV and lights. By this time Dad has already fallen asleep. I think back to the day, ”Zoe and Hugo looked happy. What will I do tomorrow? I wish tomorrow will also be a happy day.” This is my most peaceful time of a day.
