Iced Venti Half-Caf Quadruple Shot 2 Pump Sugar-Free Hazelnut 4 Pump Mocha 1/3 Soy Milk 1/3 Almond Milk 1/3 Room-Temperature Water No-Sleep Latte

The cat wouldn't let me sleep this morning. That's her thing now that the sun is rising earlier. She likes to wake me before it comes up, just to remind me, in case I forgot, that I need to feed her and my other cat their breakfast. I think she started her ritual sometime around 3:30 this morning. It was pitch black still, and I was lost in some dream I can't quite recall other than the fact that I would rather live there than here in the "real world." She does the same things every, single morning, and these things make me lose, on average, 1 1/2–2 hours of sleep every, single day. I have no control over it, and I have no idea how to adjust her behavior. The only thing I can come up with is pleading with her to stop, calmly and sweetly asking her to come back to bed, and sometimes, although very rarely, pretending like I'm going to throw a pillow at her. Don't worry, the pillow throw is just a fake-out, but it's in these moments that I realize, I would make a terrible, terrible mom. I mean, shit, kids have to eat too, right? Maybe even more than cats. I don't know the actual statistics. I haven't had time to look them up because I've been too busy googling my horoscope and prison tattoos.

This morning, this adorable feline-human ritual continued for at least a couple hours. She would go to the plastic bags where I have my loads of clean laundry and lick the bags. LICK THE BAGS! She does this because the sound drives me absolutely crazy. And because she knows that in my head, when she's licking those plastic bags, I imagine one of those little plastic tabs from where the bags connect to the metal holder at the store breaking off and ending up in her little kitty mouth, and the unexpected shock of that plastic tab in her little kitty mouth makes her take a great ingressive breath, like a gasp, and that little plastic tab then ends up at the back of her little kitty throat where she can't get it out, and she tries and tries and tries and tries, moving her little kitty paws as if they were hands, cursing the heavens for not giving her thumbs -- why god, why have you given such lesser creatures thumbs -- becoming increasingly panicked and terrified until she collapses, looking up at me still in bed, and she tries to meow for help, but she's out of breath, and her little no-thumb kitty paw reaches out for me, her protector, but she's too far away, and I'm too selfish to pay attention, and she chokes and dies right there, taking her last, untimely kitty breath on the cold tile floor next to her favorite little kitty toy, my back turned to her in a desperate attempt to return to some stupid dream where I can see my ex-boyfriend again, 

You might be thinking to yourself, well why is the clean laundry in plastic bags in the first place; and furthermore, why don't you just take the clean laundry out of the plastic bags, or move the clean laundry that's in the plastic bags to a place where your cat can't reach them? I imagine it's only natural for someone like you to ask something like that, and I'd love to give you those answers, but quite frankly, I don't think either of us want to take the time to get to the bottom of that right now. I have a show at 7 tonight, so there's just not enough time.

Since I didn't want to live through that scenario as well as the internet backlash that would follow -- #DStandsForDeath -- I decided to just get up and get their breakfast. I checked the time: it was 5:30. I figured I could just feed them then go right back to bed. If I kept my eyes half-closed the whole time maybe I wouldn't really wake up, and I could just fall back into bed and that fabulous dream where I could see his beautiful face and his eyes and his smile, right as he turned to leave with another girl. (This is a real dream, not a dream-dream, people. Sometimes you take what you can get.) I feasted them fancily while squinting and went back to bed, but it was no use. I was up for the day. So I decided to get ready and head out for some coffee or something, just enjoy the morning, with the intent of napping later. 

I originally wanted to go to my favorite local coffee shop, but it took me longer than I expected to get ready -- time sure flies when you're berating yourself in the mirror! By the time I made it out of the house, the patio of that coffee shop was packed. Since the weather's so nice, and triple-digits are fast approaching, I decided to go somewhere else where there'd be space to sit outside. So now, I'm currently posted up on an ant-infested patio at a Starbucks near my house, about eight feet from where the cars in the drive-thru place their order.

What could be more peaceful than that for my morning?

A few things come to mind as I sit here perched for all the world to see. First of all, I'm pretty glad I went back into the house last minute to put underwear on because my skirt is kinda short, and I have to sit with my legs in a funky position to avoid getting bitten by the ants. I'm even more glad that I went back into the house last minute to put underwear on because I don't want an ant bite on my labia. Labial ant bites totally suck, but they're just an unfortunate side effect of free-muffin' it in summer. Underneath it all though, I'm actually kinda bummed that I went back into the house last minute to put underwear on because it's perfect free-muffin' weather right now. I highly doubt that the ants could've gotten through my bush to bite me anyways. I guess it's just another one of those lessons in following your heart and not caring what anyone else might think -- conservative coffee drinkers and their social mores of not having your muff out in the morning be damned! Most of all though, I'm realizing that people ordering at Starbucks use their drink request as a way to feel as if they have some sort of power in their otherwise powerless existence. 

Now excuse me while I go inside to order something that will help me gain control over this cat wake-up call situation. I imagine they have something on the menu to cure that ail. If not, I'm going to fill up every, single box on the side of that cup like a god damn czar hell-bent on world domination to forget what a horrible, powerless cat mom I truly am.