I had a huge wake-up call on the weekend.
Literally.
As I struggled for space in my bed, it finally hit home how radically my life had changed.I was struggling for space because my bed was crammed full of arms, legs, fluffy tails and furry ears.
The bedlam triggered hazy memories of marvelous long, lazy Sunday mornings spent either alone as a teenager slumbering under the covers until noon, or later in life spooning with the one you loved.
But on this particular Sunday, it was 7am and I was wide-awake. I had been woken by the tween and her friend Bella scooting down the hallway in their socks on the new floorboards, chasing a puppy we were babysitting from the pet shop.
Their shrieks of delight were suddenly punctuated with screams of hysteria as the puppy hoed into the cat’s food, a seafood platter of tuna and sardines. The cat in question was holed up in bed with me. Although Princess Ashlee had adored our gorgeous Scruff dog who died earlier this year, she wasn’t having a bar of another and was appalled that we had brought this clumsy interloper home.
Her normally aloof and rather regal demeanour was completely forgotten in her desperation to escape the lolloping canine. Legs splaying on the floorboards, she hurtled down the hallway, and in one flying, spread-eagled leap landed next to me and became, most uncharacteristically, my new best friend.
The two-ten-year-olds were hot on her heels, leaping onto the bed and bouncing up and down to produce a maximum trampoline effect. This is where common sense should have prevailed and I should have fled because it was obvious what was going to happen next. The puppy, a staffie-husky cross with huge feet and no coordination, arrived and scrambled onboard the bed as well, barking his head off in glorious glee.
Naturally, Princess Ashlee jumped alert and alarmed and right onto my chest. She stiffened and puffed herself out to look her most fearsome, embedding her claws into my skin to maintain balance. The pup, too much of a rookie to be intimidated by a cranky cat, lunged. But Ashlee just clung on tighter, bringing to mind one of my father’s favourite sayings: “Never argue with a drunk, nor a cornered cat.” Then all of a sudden she leapt into the air and onto the curtains, clambering up them in undignified panic. I shouted at the kids to take the puppy and get out, and to my surprise, with one final somersault they did, stuffing the pup under an arm and bolting down the hallway. But hey, it was only 7.15 and the Sunday morning show was far from over. Just as I was wondering how my life had been reduced to this lunacy I felt a gentle tugging on the bedclothes. There was Charlie, the galah, climbing up. Attracted by the noise, she’d waddled down the hallway from her perch to investigate the commotion.
Stumbling across the bed she stopped with her beak just millimetres from my nose, fluffing her comb in anticipation of a scratch. It was then, lying there eyeballed by the parrot and glared at from above by the cat perched on the curtain rail, that my nostrils began to twitch suspiciously.
I turned my head in the direction of the very unholy scent. Evidently, the excitement had been too much for a pup with a belly full of sardines and tuna, because there on my doona was a pungent pile of regurgitated fish. No wonder the girls scarpered without question.
Sunday mornings, marvelous, just bloody marvelous.