the edge of the night

every night, like clockwork, our boy cat George punctuates the end of our bedtime routine, and the start of our descent into sleep, by yowling a very sad, pitiful tune just outside the bedroom door. “meeeeooowwwwerrr! meowerrrroowowwowww” he cries, his puny voice shrill and high-pitched, as he begs for us to come back out and play, or cuddle, or preferably both at the same time. sometimes, if the crying lasts for an inordinate duration, Ulrich or I will go back out to the living room to make sure that both cats are uninjured and breathing, but more often we ignore him until he eventually forgets his misery and falls quiet on his own.

last week there was a string of nights where i would doze off shortly after George’s regular aria but then struggle to stay asleep for more than an hour. i would wake up sweating, having kicked my half of the duvet away from my legs, my bathrobe hanging off my shoulders (yes, i sleep in my bathrobe in the winter! the bedroom is often too cold for me at the start of the night). occasionally i would get up to pee, but other times, my bladder would insist that i definitely didn’t need to, so i would lay gazing wearily at the amber light cast by street lamps outside our window and try my best not to wake Ulrich (though occasionally i would squeeze his palm with my thumb and forefinger in an attempt to make him stop snoring, with mixed results).

in the middle of one such sleepless night i began to wonder: if i stay awake long enough, will i witness the end of night and the beginning of morning? i imagine the transition between night and day to be something like stumbling off the edge of a cliff; ragged and choppy, darkness shrinking and then expanding into sudden lightness. perhaps i could see the first edges of dawn or hear the sounds of the main road crescendoing into a loud, caffeinated buzz. but somehow, reliably, i always managed to doze off into a light sleep just in time to miss the sought-after transition, though not for long enough to feel well-rested the next day.

sometimes when i got up to pee i would see the dark silhouettes of the cats lined up in a row like two toy soldiers, waiting expectantly for their automatic feeder to dispense kibble as it is programmed to do at sharply 6am each day. the earliest (latest?) i’ve seen the cats perched in their positions was a full hour before feeding time, at around 5am, according to the alarm clock on Ulrich’s bedside table as i crawled back under the sheets. 5am feels decidedly on the “morning” side of the spectrum between dusk and dawn, although the world outside our window is still soundly asleep at that time, at least for now, in the tapering winter months. i wonder how the cats always seem to know when to queue up even in the disorienting darkness of winter, or if it is rather that the edge of the night is not a point in time but rather a sensation felt in the depths of their growling tummies.

Photo by Grant McIver on Unsplash