Last night, I went to bed relatively early for me, at 10:30ish, after finishing my litter box chores for the cats.

I often put off the litter box chores too long, mostly because I dislike the litter box chores, despite thinking that it is not fair to the cats, until I need to take care of the chores at unideal times, like when I want to be falling asleep. Then I get myself through them and wash my hands heavily after, to try and mute some of the urine-litter smell they’ve acquired. I never quite immediately get that smell completely off of my hands, despite a long, soapy scrub. It is what it is.

Like most nights, once in bed, I slowly wade into sleep and then, sometime in early morning, wade out of it again, either by a call from the bathroom, or by recognition of a temperature drop in my room, or by something aggrieved in my lower legs. When I am a fool, in my hazy state I pick up my phone and mindlessly surf familiar sites for incomprehensible information. When somnolence invites, I try and wade back into sleep. An early morning drama like this plays out several times each night.

This morning, I rise out of a murky dream at 6 AM and am pleased that its protagonist, a black Rasta pilot, is named Kibbutz.

What a fine name for a character, I extol to my semi-conscious self, and my mind smiles deliriously somewhere within.

I am so pleased that in my stupor and the mild morning light I pick up my phone off the nightstand and unlock it and find my Notes app and open it and create a new page, on which I write

Kibbutz

Black Rasta pilot’s name in dream.

A nice concise celebration of that last mental cinema I enjoyed.

I hope then that I will remember the substance of that character, or that dream, and then I put my phone down, faux memory secured, and close my eyes again for another hour or so.

At 7:30, my alarm goes off, and I rally quickly and find jeans and a solid long-sleeved gray shirt and dress, and then I open a can of tuna downstairs and partition it into six soft wedges.

Po, my obligatory shadow, smells what I hold, and bids me to feed him in haste. I do.

I then take the can up to the cat room to feed the other two, their portions as generous and welcoming as the days before, and the small girl cat, after fleeing my presence barging into her room, recovers at the whiff of tuna. She attacks her portion as it is dropped in her bowl. Her portly lodger, Gordo the Particular, previously pleased with the new and moist offering he received over the last several days, smells the tuna mound before him, looks at me, and walks away from us both.

I hustle to leave the house for my dentist appointment at 8 AM, and by this time, I have forgotten everything about Kibbutz- or what exactly he had been pilot of- in my dream.

I am glad I was awake enough this morning to write this note though.