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| Mango in a quiet moment |
Every night, at approximately 9:30 p.m., the ritual begins.
Mango, our recently adopted, three-year-old orange tabby, reaches up and claws a wooden staircase post. I look into his eyes. His pupils have expanded, nearly turning his green eyes entirely black. His tail switches back and forth, back and forth, like a windshield wiper in heavy rain. He emits a short, high-pitched meow.
Mango has the “zoomies,” that cray-cray burst of energy that transforms ordinary cats and dogs, especially younger ones, into possessed nocturnal creatures. There’s even a technical name for it: Frenetic Random Activity Periods, or FRAPs. (It’s a thing; I Googled it.)
Mango’s zoomies infect me. I'm transformed too, into a version of myself that I could never have imagined — a 67-year-old playing chase with a cat up and down a flight of stairs just before bedtime, disregarding that my Oura ring, not to mention simple common sense, tells me it’s time to wind down.
Once downstairs, Mango zips into my office. I shoot rubbery hair ties up toward the ceiling so that they’ll bounce off and land near or, better yet, on him. He sometimes lunges for them. Other times, he can’t be bothered.
When he tires of the hair ties, I fling around what looks vaguely like a mouse on a string attached to a pole, which he either leaps up to catch or stares at, purring contentedly.
”Are you ever coming to bed?” Nick inevitably calls out from the upstairs bedroom.
“In a minute!,” I yell back.
Mango stretches out on the carpet, belly exposed. He arches his back and rolls over, then rolls back, then rolls over again. I rub his head, gently. His eyes close and open slowly. His body vibrates with breathy purrs.
I rub his head again and try my luck rubbing his back and then, because it’s exposed, his belly. Mango allows it for a few seconds, but I know what comes next.
Mango extends one, sometimes two paws, to playfully bat away my hand. Within seconds, he goes from sweet to swat.
This nightly ritual sometimes lasts for 10 minutes, other nights 20 or 30.
Eventually, reality tries to intrude.
I look at tomorrow’s calendar on my phone and make a calculation. If I continue to play with Mango tonight, will I still get eight hours’ sleep before I must face the camera for tomorrow’s first Zoom call? (Yes, my life these days really does alternate between Zooms and zoomies.) Will my Oura Sleep Score drop as a result and if so, what will that do to my Readiness Score tomorrow?
With fatigue creeping in, I trudge upstairs. Mango zips past me on the steps, pausing to claw another stairway post.
I can’t resist. “I’m going to git you!” I whisper to him. He races back downstairs into the office, with me right behind. (In case you’re concerned that I will fall and break a hip, be assured that I always hold the railing as I rush down the stairs.)
Hair ties are again airborne. Mango chases some, ignores others. After a few more minutes of play, and a half-dozen flings of the mouse-like toy, I’m determined it really, truly, finally is time for bed.
Once upstairs, I go to close the bedroom door when I hear Mango meowing from below. I know what that meow means. It means Mango wants to play. And why shouldn't he? He can — and does — sleep much of the day.
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| Mango sleeps all day so he can play all night |
Shutting the bedroom door will (mostly) silence those meows. And so, naturally, I step out into the hallway, close the door behind me, head back downstairs yet again. I find Mango on the office floor, stretched out, back arched, rolling over and over.
I kiss his head, as many times as he will allow before he tries to swat me. And then I pick up a hair tie, stretch it like a sling shot, send it flying up to the ceiling, and watch it fall down on or near Mango, tomorrow’s first Zoom call be damned.
NOTE: This is the first in a series of posts about The Magnificent Mango Martin. Stay tuned for stories about how we came to adopt him (he was headed for the shelter), how he gets along with our neighbors' cats Max and Leo (it's a mixed bag), and the one ongoing conflict I have with Mango.
