Catatonic sleep

TheBloke (TM) and I occasionally like to go away for the weekend.  We're like that.  Hedonistic.  The problem with going away is we have a Monty Cat who demands feeding twice a day.  More if he thinks he can get away with it.

For longer stays, we're lucky to have friends and family who'll look after the pesky ginger furball, but when you're just going away for a night it barely seems worth it.  So we invested in an autofeeder.  This thing is pretty clever; you pop in the food, set the timer, and it springs open at the allotted time.  It can hold two meals, so would be OK for a 24 hour period.

We tested out the autofeeder, to great success.  Monty Cat wasn't fussy about eating out of it (we weren't especially surprised by this; he eats off the floor regularly, so a different-shaped dish wasn't likely to be a barrier to the greedy feline.)  Then a genius thought struck:

Every Saturday and Sunday morning, Monty Cat will enter our room at 7.00, the same as he does every week day.  He will miaow.  Then he will start digging his claws into the carpet.  And finally he will start biting our toes.  Just to remind us that he is there and he would quite like to be fed, if it's no trouble to us.  So one of us will blearily descend the stairs, feed the cat and then try - vainly - to get back to sleep.

But now we had an autofeeder!  All our problems would be solved.  Excitedly on Friday night, I filled the feeder with Monty food for the morning, and set the timer for 7 a.m..  I was going to get a cat-free lie-in.  I was as excited as a new parent with the promise of an unbroken 8 hours' sleep.

Roll on 7 a.m. yesterday.  "Miaow."  Scratch, scratch, scratch.  "Miaow."  Scratch.  "Fuck!"

(The "fuck" wasn't Monty Cat, but was TheBloke (TM) being awoken by having his toes gently nibbled.)

I worried the autofeeder hadn't worked, so went downstairs, with a joyful ginger bastard bouncing gleefully behind me.  The autofeeder had worked fine, but the cat hadn't bothered to come downstairs.  The cat's flowchart looks like this:

Step 1 - Wake up the humans.  Step 2 - Get fed.

In his little cat brain, he had to achieve Step 1 before Step 2 could be realised.  So I showed him where the food was.  He ate.  I thought, at least he'll work it out tomorrow.

He didn't.  So now at 7 a.m. every weekend morning, I now show the cat where his food is.

Anyone want a cat?