On the Matter of the 5:47 AM Briefing
Iowa City at 5:40 in the morning is a particular kind of quiet. Not the loud, theatrical quiet of a place that has gone to sleep and wants you to know it — but the real thing, the deep, blue-grey stillness that settles between the end of night and the hesitation of dawn. The condo holds it well. The windows go pale at the edges. Somewhere outside, a bird opens negotiations with the day. And in my chair (another story), I'm under two quilts that represent the sum total of my best judgment about comfort; I am — theoretically, technically — asleep.
I say theoretically because Mickey has other plans.
For those who are not yet acquainted: Mickey is a black cat, compact and opinionated, who arrived in my life two years ago and has been running it, with quiet efficiency, ever since. He is not a difficult cat. He is not, in the traditional sense, a demanding cat. He is simply a cat who has concluded — through careful personal research and a process I can only describe as iron logic — that he is, in fact, a dog.
He retrieves toy mice, toy footballs, and hair ties with a focus that borders on professional. He meets me at the door when I come home, every single time, with the relieved enthusiasm of a golden retriever who had genuinely begun to worry. He follows me from room to room on the unspoken theory that wherever I am going, it is probably important, and he should be involved. He stands watch at the windows with the gravity of someone who has been given responsibility and intends to honor it.
None of this prepared me for the briefing.
It began, as best I can determine, approximately six weeks after Mickey moved in. The time — and I want to be precise here, because Mickey is precise — is 5:47 AM. Not 5:45. Not 5:50. Five forty-seven, which falls squarely in the window between "the night is still technically happening" and "a reasonable person might, conceivably, be awake." Mickey has identified this window. Mickey has claimed it.
The procedure unfolds as follows. First, there is the arrival — a weight that lands on my chest with the matter-of-fact certainty of a completed decision. No announcement. No request. Simply: Mickey is here now, and the agenda will begin shortly. Next comes the positioning. He turns once — always once, never twice — and settles into a sphinx-like arrangement approximately four inches from my face. At this distance, I can see that he is watching me with an expression that is not unkind but is absolutely non-negotiable.
Then he waits.
For perhaps thirty seconds — and these are long seconds, the kind that have texture — he simply studies me. I have thought about what he is looking for during this phase. I have decided that he is determining whether I am, as yet, conscious enough to receive the briefing. If the answer is no, he escalates. A single paw, placed with surgical precision on the end of my nose. Not a tap — a placement. He sets his paw there the way you would set a coffee cup on a document you needed someone to read. And then, when my eyes open — which they do, because what else can a person do — he begins to chirp.
I want to describe the chirp accurately, because I think it matters. It is not a meow. It is not a demand. It is something between a question and a statement — a small, clear, repetitive sound that conveys both urgency and patience, which is a combination I did not previously know was possible. It says: You are awake now. Good. Here is what needs to be addressed. What needs to be addressed, as far as I can determine, is everything.
I have, in the interest of science and personal dignity, attempted to negotiate.
"Mickey," I said one morning, at 5:47 and twelve seconds, with what I felt was great reasonableness, "it is not yet six o'clock." Mickey chirped. "The sun," I continued, "has not risen." Another chirp, closer this time, with the paw repositioning itself from my nose to my chin — an upgrade, I was given to understand, in urgency. "I was asleep," I said. "I was having a dream. It was a good dream." Mickey blinked once, slowly, which in cat language apparently means: I am aware of all this, and it is not relevant to the briefing.
I lost. I always lose. I have stopped being bothered by this.
What I have started doing instead is reaching for my camera.
There is a quality of light at 5:47 AM — even in a bedroom, even filtered through curtains — that a photographer notices. It is soft in a way that the rest of the day forgets how to be. And Mickey, backlit and upright and entirely serious about whatever it is he is serious about, is — I will just say it — a magnificent subject. I have returned to him again and again with a lens: the arch of his attention at the window, the precise geometry of his patrol, the theatrical collapse into sleep that follows the briefing as though all that work has simply worn him out. He has never once asked to see the results. He is an artist's subject in the purest sense — present, unself-conscious, and thoroughly himself.
I might add here that Mickey is getting about $8.00 every other week. Not quiet enough to pay for food and litter, but his earnings every other week are honestly a respectable start for a cat who contributes nothing to the grocery bill and requires two weeks' notice before accepting a lap visitor. Once his page is live on rallenhill.com with a proper readership, that number has real room to grow. I believe his brand is stronger than mine.
Here is what I have come to understand, though. And this is the part that I am still turning over — the part that a 5:47 AM wake-up call, of all unlikely things, has been teaching me.
Mickey shows up. Every single morning, without exception, without resentment, without checking whether conditions are ideal. He shows up at exactly the moment he has decided matters, and he is entirely, uncomplicatedly present for it. He is not distracted. He is not negotiating with himself about whether this is a good use of his time. He has a sense of what he is supposed to do — be here, be attentive, make contact — and he does it with a commitment that I, frankly, find instructive.
(well, except for a fly or a creepy crawly thins.) I am a photographer. I am a writer. I have built a creative life out of the practice of showing up — to the light, to the page, to the quiet mornings that ask something of you if you're willing to meet them. And somehow I needed a black cat who thinks he is a dog to remind me, at 5:47 AM, that presence is not a strategy. It is just a choice you make, again and again, until it becomes who you are.
Mickey would like me to note that he already knew this.
He is not wrong.
I say theoretically because Mickey has other plans.
For those who are not yet acquainted: Mickey is a black cat, compact and opinionated, who arrived in my life two years ago and has been running it, with quiet efficiency, ever since. He is not a difficult cat. He is not, in the traditional sense, a demanding cat. He is simply a cat who has concluded — through careful personal research and a process I can only describe as iron logic — that he is, in fact, a dog.
He retrieves toy mice, toy footballs, and hair ties with a focus that borders on professional. He meets me at the door when I come home, every single time, with the relieved enthusiasm of a golden retriever who had genuinely begun to worry. He follows me from room to room on the unspoken theory that wherever I am going, it is probably important, and he should be involved. He stands watch at the windows with the gravity of someone who has been given responsibility and intends to honor it.
None of this prepared me for the briefing.
It began, as best I can determine, approximately six weeks after Mickey moved in. The time — and I want to be precise here, because Mickey is precise — is 5:47 AM. Not 5:45. Not 5:50. Five forty-seven, which falls squarely in the window between "the night is still technically happening" and "a reasonable person might, conceivably, be awake." Mickey has identified this window. Mickey has claimed it.
The procedure unfolds as follows. First, there is the arrival — a weight that lands on my chest with the matter-of-fact certainty of a completed decision. No announcement. No request. Simply: Mickey is here now, and the agenda will begin shortly. Next comes the positioning. He turns once — always once, never twice — and settles into a sphinx-like arrangement approximately four inches from my face. At this distance, I can see that he is watching me with an expression that is not unkind but is absolutely non-negotiable.
Then he waits.
For perhaps thirty seconds — and these are long seconds, the kind that have texture — he simply studies me. I have thought about what he is looking for during this phase. I have decided that he is determining whether I am, as yet, conscious enough to receive the briefing. If the answer is no, he escalates. A single paw, placed with surgical precision on the end of my nose. Not a tap — a placement. He sets his paw there the way you would set a coffee cup on a document you needed someone to read. And then, when my eyes open — which they do, because what else can a person do — he begins to chirp.
I want to describe the chirp accurately, because I think it matters. It is not a meow. It is not a demand. It is something between a question and a statement — a small, clear, repetitive sound that conveys both urgency and patience, which is a combination I did not previously know was possible. It says: You are awake now. Good. Here is what needs to be addressed. What needs to be addressed, as far as I can determine, is everything.
I have, in the interest of science and personal dignity, attempted to negotiate.
"Mickey," I said one morning, at 5:47 and twelve seconds, with what I felt was great reasonableness, "it is not yet six o'clock." Mickey chirped. "The sun," I continued, "has not risen." Another chirp, closer this time, with the paw repositioning itself from my nose to my chin — an upgrade, I was given to understand, in urgency. "I was asleep," I said. "I was having a dream. It was a good dream." Mickey blinked once, slowly, which in cat language apparently means: I am aware of all this, and it is not relevant to the briefing.
I lost. I always lose. I have stopped being bothered by this.
What I have started doing instead is reaching for my camera.
There is a quality of light at 5:47 AM — even in a bedroom, even filtered through curtains — that a photographer notices. It is soft in a way that the rest of the day forgets how to be. And Mickey, backlit and upright and entirely serious about whatever it is he is serious about, is — I will just say it — a magnificent subject. I have returned to him again and again with a lens: the arch of his attention at the window, the precise geometry of his patrol, the theatrical collapse into sleep that follows the briefing as though all that work has simply worn him out. He has never once asked to see the results. He is an artist's subject in the purest sense — present, unself-conscious, and thoroughly himself.
I might add here that Mickey is getting about $8.00 every other week. Not quiet enough to pay for food and litter, but his earnings every other week are honestly a respectable start for a cat who contributes nothing to the grocery bill and requires two weeks' notice before accepting a lap visitor. Once his page is live on rallenhill.com with a proper readership, that number has real room to grow. I believe his brand is stronger than mine.
Here is what I have come to understand, though. And this is the part that I am still turning over — the part that a 5:47 AM wake-up call, of all unlikely things, has been teaching me.
Mickey shows up. Every single morning, without exception, without resentment, without checking whether conditions are ideal. He shows up at exactly the moment he has decided matters, and he is entirely, uncomplicatedly present for it. He is not distracted. He is not negotiating with himself about whether this is a good use of his time. He has a sense of what he is supposed to do — be here, be attentive, make contact — and he does it with a commitment that I, frankly, find instructive.
(well, except for a fly or a creepy crawly thins.) I am a photographer. I am a writer. I have built a creative life out of the practice of showing up — to the light, to the page, to the quiet mornings that ask something of you if you're willing to meet them. And somehow I needed a black cat who thinks he is a dog to remind me, at 5:47 AM, that presence is not a strategy. It is just a choice you make, again and again, until it becomes who you are.
Mickey would like me to note that he already knew this.
He is not wrong.