Marius here.

In case you humans didn’t know it, cats have a goal, a daily goal. And that is to achieve the perfect 18 hours of sleep. Achieving the 1-8 is never an easy thing, but you have to have a gold standard, something to aim for. I mean, after all — if you have no clear cut goal — you’re never going to get anything done.

My day revolves around playing chase with my buddy, Lucca, having smackerels of food, sleeping, and watching life outside of my 3rd floor apartment. Those squirrels and birds bear watching! The other day there was a moth on our screen for a period of time. The fluttering, oh, the fluttering. If I could just have reached through the glass!

Other bits of the day are taken up with demanding attention from my humans, on my terms, and scratching on a flat piece of roughened cardboard.

I’m an artistic sort, and I like re-decorating. For instance, the side of that chair across the room would look so much better with a few tufts of stuffing showing. It’s all about texture, right? But this upsets my main human, and she yells, which is just highly unpleasant. So I’ve given up on this project temporarily.

The one task that eclipses them all is getting to that golden 18 hour sleep goal.

This brings me to my next point. My human, Ann, travels a lot. It’s been this way ever since she brought me from the SPCA two years ago. It works for us. Okay, sometimes she was gone too much, but then our buddy Trish came over to give us food. And Trish is really good at playing. So we would have a marvelous time with whatever game she contrived, and then sleep like the dead. Achieving the 1-8? Never a problem.

But now with this coronavirus thing. My human Ann, like, she almost NEVER leaves. She’s always here. And while in some ways this is nice, it means getting that 18 hours of sleep in is very, very difficult.

It’s little things like, when I’m sound asleep, she’ll talk to me: “Marius, how are you doing?”  — How was I doing? I was asleep until you called my name! Or then the times when I’m curled up in a tight ball next to her, with my paw over my eyes  — a sure signal that I am sound asleep — and she strokes my back and scratches around my ruff and ears. I look up at her with one eye squinted open . . . Really? couldn’t you see that I was perfectly comfortable? And ASLEEP??

So all of you people stuck at home with your cats for hours and days on end. We love you. But show us a little respect. And when we’re sound asleep, maybe, just maybe could you refrain from putting your hands on us? Help us all achieve the 1-8!