Cat-a-tonic.

Hullo ma wee blog,

I wake slowly not wanting to be released from the warm and comfortable oddity of knowing I'm in bed and  asleep. As I come slowly up through layers of gentle awareness and away from the dream state, layers of sound come to the fore; raindrops softly pattering the velux window across the room; slow drips from the underside of the window frame hitting the metal flashing at the joint of the red pantiles of the roof. Beyond these sounds comes a stir of wind and an early birds sing-song, close yet muted by distance and the rain, the kind of gently dropping rain that I hear my father's deeply distinctive voice in my head call  'just a wee smirr' in that broad Scots dialect he used. I smile with the memory and let my mind follow the sound out of the window through the rain and I concentrate on the birdsong as it warbles and undulates across the garden from the branches of one of the plum trees there. The sound moves up and down, a plaintive, thoughtful, appreciative hymn to a morning not quite started. Further out others take up the call. The jackdaw's caw from the mature trees beyond the next door cottage is for once not abrasive, but softened too in the air by distance and gentle rain. From the roof of the cottage a gull joins into this almost Disneyesque call to morning. In my minds eye I see it throw back its head and stretch its wings as it does so. Small birds cheep and the hens across the garden fence cluck from within their roost, eager to be out. I hear a birds scuttling feet on the roof tiles just outside the window.

I am awake.

My eyes open and register the soft grey of approaching dawn, the colours of the room undefined in the gloom, straight edges of the door and furniture still blurred and indistinct. The duvet is plumped around me and I see the outline of my Lovely G at my side. Beyond her lies Jess, visible only as a few blobs of ginger and black against the white of the duvet as her mainly white coat is also swallowed up despite the gently increasing palette now developing from shade. My movement has disturbed her slumber too, but not quite to the point of being awake. {Jess isn't an 'early bird' kind of cat} Still in her dream state she twists and stretches, ending up lying on her back, eyes closed, rear legs up and the pads of her back paws pointing to the ceiling. Her tail twitches languorously between her legs and she stretches out a paw beyond her head, splaying the pads and showing its claws as she does so, the other paw held close to her chest like a child with a doll. A deep sigh emits from her chest and slowly, slowly the outstretched paw relaxes until it rests on the duvet beyond her nose. Her tail starts a twitch but stills as she falls back into a deep sleep, one rear leg giving a minuscule spasm which lifts it a couple of centimetres before it too sinks slowly back to its former place. She snores, a small sound that brings a smile to my lips as I ease out of bed and silently collect my clothes, leaving both sleeping bodies behind.  I take one last look in at them before pulling the door closed behind me and turning to head downstairs to the computer and the luxury and comfort of an early morning coffee.

I can't take the grin from my face as I open the door to the kitchen.

Magic. Pure and simple. Magic.

Listening to this: An early morning favourite wakener.