Devonne Brown

Why Not?

I heard rambling. Not the break in kind of rambling, but the kind of rambling like someone was looking for something but they couldn’t find it rambling. It got loud enough to wake me up. It was louder than a cat.

“What are you doing?” I turned on the light, “Whatever it is you’re looking for you need a light to find it. I keep coffee and tea in that drawer, do you want coffee? It’s still dark.”

“I wanted some tea,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. The cat jumped on my head, woke me,  and I thought a cup of tea would be good to get me back to sleep. I know it’s in here somewhere. Ah. Earl Grey, decaf. Perfect. Do you have honey and lemon juice?”

“Put bourbon in it for a lovely sleep elixir, equal parts. Makes a beautiful toddy with the Earl Grey, particularly if you want to go back to sleep,”

“What I want to do is shut the door so the cat stays off of my head, but he bangs on the door and cries if I do that, I tried. The toddy sounds nice. You want one too?”

We fixed anti-cat toddies at two in the morning. Equal parts honey, very strong tea, lemon juice, and bourbon. We also locked the cats in the laundry room to eliminate their caterwauling and pounding on doors. They had food, water, beds, and litter boxes. They could take their vengeance out on us in the morning. We were going to sleep.

Just as Morpheus returned, the sound of a brass band came from the laundry room. The cats had climbed on and managed to knock over a brass bed I had leaning against the wall, I had been polishing it. It sounded like the end of the house exploded. Two tiny four legged creatures climbed the walls and ran across the ceiling to hide under the table in the living room. Their eyes were huge. They had no idea they could make that much noise. Brass pipes and bed connectors were still bouncing in the laundry room when I was able to check out the situation.

“The tea thing didn’t work out so well. I’m going to make coffee now and stay up. You go back to bed. They don’t want to go to bed and they don’t want to be locked in the laundry room. I’ll protect you from the cats.”

It wasn’t the ideal situation, but sleep was more attractive than the cats. So, he went back to bed, I made coffee and watched the sun come up on the snow, and listened to the sweet quiet air trapped between the flakes.