42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

Cats may someday take over the world. Or my TV turned itself on. Or there was a visitor in the house, either supernatural or of a more burglar type. My vote is for the cats.

5:30 a.m. I wake up. There is a cat purring on my head. That’s not unusual. Data often makes his presence known early, when he’s made it clear that he thinks it’s about time you wake up. And oh, while you’re waking up, I’m going to be cute for my allotted two minutes a day.

His purr is loud. I wonder if he did it on purpose.

But it’s a little early for Data. I look to the blind-covered window. No light escapes through the slats. So it’s early, early. Not just early for the lazy night-shifter who really can’t stand being awake before 8 a.m.

I blink my eyes a bit and look at the glow in the hallway. Nothing registers. Then I hear sounds. Slowly, my brain struggles to put words to what I’m seeing and hearing.

The downstairs TV is on.

My paranoia is more awake than I am. Did someone break into the house? If so, are they really watching TV? It sounds like … Falling Slowly from the soundtrack of Once.

Common sense says I should go down with a baseball bat. Except I don’t have a baseball bat. Barring that, we probably should be paying for the security alarm, instead of unplugging it.

But I’m not awake. And I’m not sure what’s going on. I go down slowly, stupidly without glasses. Look around and squint at the foot of the stairs, into the livingroom. Nobody random drunk college student has barged into the house, and is now watching a music video while collapsed on the couch.

No. There’s one cat balled up on the couch. I look around some more. I get closer to the TV to squint at the video, because I liked the movie. I don’t recall the TV being turned to a music video station when it was turned off, but perhaps it was.

Surprisingly, I’m calm about this mystery. And now surrounded by three cats. All of them rubbing against my legs, meowing and carrying on.

Then I looked at their food dish, as I always do when all three of them are overly affectionate at the same time.

Empty. I fill it bemusedly and decide that one of the cats had turned the TV on. Even though the remote was on the corner of the coffee table, and not knocked down. I should mention that the remote has seen better days and the cover will fall off if you look at it funny. Yet it was still attached.

So while I could say that one of them accidentally turned the TV on, I’m going to suggest, just suggest, that one of them turned it on quite deliberately. Data, the decoy, was sure to wake me up so I would notice that the TV was on.

It was all elaborately planned to get food. They have a new trick. Now that they know it works, they’re going to use it every night.