When is sunshine not really sunshine?

This morning I woke up when Alfred, the half grown cat who ought to be grateful that I didn’t leave him to die of starvation in the middle of winter, bit me on the elbow. Hard.

It was unexpected, and I yelped, loud enough to wake Evelyn, who looked less than delighted to be awake, and promptly crawled over to take advantage of my boobs. She was nearly back asleep when Alfred nibbled on her fingers, making her yelp, and waking us both right up.

Alfred is not meant to sleep in my bed. Sometimes though, he sneaks in stealthily, and curls up like a hot water bottle at the base of my back, which feels so nice that I am loath to throw him across the room. He’s like a boomarang anyway, in that he always comes back, and he’ll probably take my face off when he does.

So we were awake, and the sun was streaming in through the window. Well, that part is a lie. I could see that there was sun streaming outside, but my window faces the wrong way for morning sun, which is probably a good thing. And anyway, it was windy, and cold looking, despite the sunshine. You should never trust sunshine that you can’t feel on your skin because it’s probably only pretending to be warm.

I checked my clock, expecting – because of the sunshine, and the eager kitten, and the awake baby – it to be at least 7.12am, owing to the clock change last weekend meaning Evelyn wakes up at a time that isn’t horrendous on the clock.

It was 5.58am, which, if this had happened a week ago, would have made it 4.58am, the thought of which made me cry.

But onwards and upwards.

I’d like to say I threw myself out of bed with vigour, greeting the sunshine (that isn’t really sunshine, because it’s not warming anything up) and grabbing the day by its testicles.

I’d be lying, again, because instead I pulled the covers up to my chin, tucked Evelyn into the curve of my body and mumbled into her head in the hope that I was actually chanting some mystical spell that would put her back to sleep.

It didn’t work, and she let me know it wasn’t working by gleefully trying to feed me a feather that she’d picked out of my ageing doona, before poking me in the eye and wiggling so much that at one point, she was sitting on my head and bouncing.

The day continued to be daylike and I was forced out of bed.

The benefits of being out of bed include: the ability to sit in a puddle of false sunshine, music, hot tea, and the fact that none of the cats urinated in the basket of washing that needs folding before I had a chance to throw them outside.

The downsides of being out of bed include: I am awake and so are all my children.

I fully expect the day to improve with the application of brownies and tea. Probably.

In the meantime, Alfred is meowing at me from the kitchen window and I think Evelyn might be trying to eat her brother. I can’t see from here. The false sunshine is blindingly bright.