One thing this week living alone taking care of everything on the farm has taught me about cats and dogs is this. Both of them have accurate time systems and they love routines.
I grew up in an environment with a German father that had a time obsession. That meant my whole family had a time obdession too. I remember the watches and how excited he was when they switched to clicking the second hand in steps instead of rotating, do he could visual)y see time clicking.
It was a ritual yo listen to the government official time signal every Sunday and make sure the clocks all matched. I never knew I was obsessive until other people pointed it out.i tell the story about how I was convinced about being ocd by the doctor.
That isn’t what I discovered about the animals though. There is obsession about being on time but then there is knowing what time it is even without a fancy watch that ticks every second.
My cat learned my routine to minute accuracy and won’t let me deviate from it now, which I find adorable and annoying simultaneously. Mostly because it wasn’t a routine I consciously wanted. I don’t need to be woken up at 4am every day just because I happened to get up and pee three nights in a row and pet the cat.
Now if I don’t follow her routine I end up being forced to. She has taken it upon herself to be the one that keeps me on schedule. She waits patiently for almost zero minutes before enforcing cuddle time, even from a deep sleep.
The dogs seem to have learned what time as well. Their rituals are extremely accurately timed, as if they heard the time ticking until I miss a feeding. Within minutes of the time they ate the day before.
The animals have given me a routine where none existed and they did it by day 3. It gets reinforced every day because I don’t want to upset them. Even the pets can tell at me and I do what I can to make them happy.
Do I’m a 4am cat cuddler now. The new me. I’m not sure what will happen when the usual pet master returns tonight I’m guessing he might not appreciate the dog alarm clock at 630 am an hour earlier that the food demands began when he was the provider. It’s harder to train them to wait an extra hour for cuddles and kibble. Much harder.
I could say that’s not my problem as of tomorrow, but just like living with a time obsessed father, it’s hard to ignore a dog when it knows this is when you fed it yesterday. Dogs yell louder than my father.
Accept and adapt. It will be enforced.
