An adult male interacting with an orange tabby cat in a home setting during daytime.

0:34

Nick T 11M views Save

His cat wakes him at 4 am, so he meows back

Name: His cat wakes him at 4 am, so he meows back
Uploaded: 2016-12-03T14:45:52Z
Duration: 34 s
Description: Every morning at four, Italics the cat decides Nick has slept long enough. Then one day Nick finds the cat fast asleep in broad daylight and returns the favor.

Every morning at four, Italics the cat decides Nick has slept long enough. Then one day Nick finds the cat fast asleep in broad daylight and returns the favor. more

Cats are built to hunt at dawn and dusk, when the light is dim enough to hide them and bright enough to see by. An indoor cat never quite drops the habit, which is how some of them end up waking the house at 4 am to ask for food. Italics, an orange and white tabby, had been doing exactly that to Nick for a week. Italics, like any cat, also naps most of the day.

Italics, a fluffy orange cat, sits near a window with his head turned to one side and his eyes partly closed. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Italics dozes by the window in the daytime, with no idea what is coming.

That's the opening Nick takes. Italics is dozing by the window, eyes half shut, as content as a cat gets. Nick creeps in until his face is barely a foot from the cat's, wearing the look of a man who hasn't slept properly in seven days, or a good imitation of it.

Then he meows. It's loud and very convincing, and it lands from a foot away. Italics jolts awake. He doesn't swat and he doesn't bolt. He looks everywhere except at Nick, hunting the room for whatever made that noise, and seems to decide it was nothing worth getting up for.

An adult male interacting with an orange tabby cat in a home setting during daytime. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Every morning at four, Italics the cat decides Nick has slept long enough.

Nick, with the thinnest of smiles, tells his cat not to meow in the middle of the night. Then the two of them turn and look straight at the camera.

Nick, a man with long hair and a beard, looks to one side with his mouth slightly open, indoors beside a dark object. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Nick has a word with Italics about meowing in the middle of the night.

That shared look is the best part. Some read it as a cat who feels betrayed; many read it as a declaration of war. One viewer summed up the whole thing as a human waking up his owner.

People who live with cats call it horrible and funny for the same reason: it's true. Hardly anyone thinks it worked. Most figure Italics was back at it at four the next morning.

#cats