Geez, are we whipped.

Monday night I got home late from an evening with friends. 10:30 PM, which is quite late for me, because I have to get up at 4-friggin'-o'clock in the bleeding-A.M. I brush teeth and fall into bed.

And can't fall asleep, because the wife is working hard on an art project due Tuesday. She’s cutting thick sheets of paper. Scritch, scritch. Ching!

No point in complaining; she's in school, after all. I just get up and close the door. Several hours of sleep blessedly follow.

Wife comes to bed late for her, having finished the project at 1:30 AM. She has an 8 AM class (and is unhappy about it, but usually gets zero sympathy from me). Because she's been working on aforementioned project all evening and I haven't been home all day, the cat has not had sufficient (read: any) playtime.

So he starts thrashing around in the bedroom. "I can jump in the laundry basket! Now, out! And... again!" Then he discovers the doorstop. Thwongggg. Thwongggg.

Wife gets up and semi-gently throws cat out of bedroom and shuts the door. We both try to get to sleep.

Galen meerkats on hind legs and scratches at the door. Scritch scritch scritch scritch! Scritch scritch scritch scritch! It is apparent that neither of us will get any sleep until the cat has had playtime.

Wife gets up, puts on a robe, and groggily plays with the cat in the other room for an hour. Returns to bed around 2:30.

The only upside of this? Cat was too tuckered out to wake me up any further with raspy chin-washing. 'Course, I was too beat to write about this yesterday.

Pet ownership. It doesn’t mean that we own him...

What I'm reading: Neal Stephenson, The Confusion