Woken by the Belle

It's morning again.

How do I know? Because at the first hint of the dawn, Miss Memphis Belle gets up from her dog bed, gently glides over to the side of my bed, then leaps up, plants her front paws on my bed, and commences to lick my face. When I push her away, she begins batting at me (inevitably striking me in the face) and making her happy "Ar, ar, ar, ar, ar....." noise that is normally cute but when you're half asleep and planning to sleep in, it's like fingernails on a blackboard combined with an air raid siren.

A loud "NO!" and a good shove gets her to stop and she goes back to her dog bed, but a minute or two later, the first time that I so much as turn my head to look at the clock, she gets up, runs over, and starts it all over again. This continues until I finally get up.

Meanwhile, on his dog bed, Murphy is still comfortably curled up, snickering.

So I get up, let the dogs out, put their breakfast in their dishes, let them in (standing back from the doorway to avoid the pre-breakfast stampede) and then they gobble their food and GO BACK TO BED!

Now I'm the only one in the house that's still up and awake, and I'm the only one that really planned to sleep in until a reasonably decadent time. These two idiots, on the other hand, will sleep until dinnertime.

All I'm saying is that hamsters don't do this sort of stuff every morning.