It's a battlefield.

I'm sure someone somewhere at some time has said something along the lines of "the greatest battles are with the ones you love", or "there is nothing so fierce as those wars we wage in the home" or "you always piss off the ones you live with" or anything that means that sometimes, the people (and/or four legged furry creatures) who are closest to you and who live with you can really make your life difficult, more so than even the like.. really big things. That's what it's like here. I may have been banging on a lot recently about how I'm all alone and lonely and oh so lonesome etc.. and I still am, with the exception of a particular four legged furry creature. It is said four legged furry creature I wish to speak of now. Cooley, the cat. She is a master a psychological warfare, mind games and general super brattiness. You see.. she, like most sentient beings, likes to eat. It is necessary with our living arrangements for the humans to feed her, and well, we try to feed her at regular times, and the right sort of food and not too much. She doesn't always agree with our methods, especially the not too much part.. but also the.. feeding time not being earlier than we wish to get out of bed. Or the middle of the night. She likes to use her particular set of skills to get us to do what she wants.. She scratches things, rips up paper, knocks things off tables or just stares. If all that fails then there's the endless meowing. Needless to say, this can get vexing. It's gotten worse the last few weeks I've been on my own here, I don't know why but every night, again and again and again, she scratches, stares, meows, knocks, stares, meows, rips, taps... once to get me up to feed her, then again to get me to give her more, and then again.. and often again. Just before bed and then again or twice during the short night before I get up because I just can't sleep. Oh yeah.. I'm not getting enough sleep. I try to stand up to her, not to feed her too much, hoping that eventually she'll just settle down and go to sleep, but she doesn't. She just stares. Or scratches, or knocks, or meows or.. you get the picture. I haven't been getting much sleep lately.