If a child wakes me in the middle of the night because they have had a bad dream, they need assistance in the bathroom, have a soiled diaper, want to tell me a knock-knock joke or remembered the name of their new best friend they must schedule a sleepover with, I’m okay with it.

When Hornsour the cat wakes me at 1:44am because she has a visitor on our deck wanting nothing more than to find shelter from the rain on one of the remaining seven cushioned dining chairs, why do you suppose she would hiss and attack this fellow straggler?

Guess what Hornsour? Those are not your chairs and that other drifter has as much right (zero) to be up there as you do.

I am trapped in our room knowing if I bang on the door to scare either of them away, they will look at me with their slick, alley-cat smarmy faces and move only enough to lick their paws in a taunting “we own this neighbourhood” kind of way.

If I do decide to bang on the door this will most definitely result in the telling of several knock-knock jokes, trips to the bathroom and midnight snack-cart service because it will wake the entire house.

If I open the door to shoo them away, the alarm will start blaring and again, interrupting cow until the sun starts to rise.

If I flick the blinds sending morse code type messages translated into feline, I would quickly remember these are street cats with little to no education and will simply see a tired mother-of-three smacking her wooden blinds around for no reason whatsoever.

Greg would see the silhouette of a maniac attempting to destroy his level and mounting project.

If I turn on the outdoor lights (which I did) the scene doesn’t change, at least for the cats which begs the question, why not make these warm, cushionny advances in the light of day rather than interrupting me mid half-sleep?

I watched for as long as my eyes would allow and just before the slats on the blinds pulled free from their strings, slapping like dominoes to the ground, I hiked it back to bed.

Greg’s alarm began to chime at 5:30am and it was school lunch making time. I need the extra thirty minutes to give some extra attention to stuffing Ellie’s bag.

I know there will be many sleepless nights in our future. Winter is almost here, flu season is hovering over us all and there were two notices of lice in the school this week.

I simply ask the squatter cats whose fur balls and mangled part insect, part bird, part rat corpses have been tolerated, dumped and abandoned on our deck that you keep it down between the hours of 10pm and 6am.

Sincerely,

The Management