Give Me Back My Sleep, Silly Cat!

Plus this week's music picks!

I was recently looking at my calendar, and I realized something surprising: it’s already been three months since we got our sweet cat Juno!

He LOVED sleeping on this pizza box; I felt so bad when we inevitably had to throw it away.

Life has been great with him ever since, except for one annoying habit of his: from anywhere between 5AM and 6:30 AM, Juno comes into our room to poke at our faces. At first we didn’t understand why, but we quickly figured out he wanted someone to feed him. And, while it was nice to solve the mystery, that didn’t stop him from pestering us at ungodly hours of night.

Much sleep was lost for months until we finally decided to buy an auto feeder. Specifically, this one!

Juno’s feeder, waiting for him to come and eat.

If you don’t know what it does, you can probably guess based on the name. Using a phone app, the feeder lets us schedule Juno’s mealtimes for him throughout the day. This includes having it feed him at 4:45 A.M. when we are not even conscious, and giving him small meals throughout the day.

We’ve only experienced using it over the weekend, but on the very first night Juno didn’t bother us for once! I’m now excited to test this thing out on a work night and actually get more sleep than I’m used to. No more days of feeling like a zombie because my cat needs food! We’ll see if it keeps working out, but so far so good!

What I’m listening to this Week

• 10,000 maniacs - MTV Unplugged

  • I kept seeing people talk about this album because it was recently released on vinyl for the first time ever — a bit of a shocker considering the recording is from 1993. I didn’t originally have intentions of buying it since I’m picky about live albums, but I saw an old used copy of it on CD at my local record store. I initially passed it up a few times, but after seeing it was still there, I decided to give it a shot. I can say it’s definitely worth the hype. The band sounds great live and instruments like the mandolin shine brightly throughout. Plus, the music is just plain good!

• Bon Iver - 22, a million

  • I feel like I’m cheating since I just talked about Volcano Choir, another project of Justin Vernon’s, in my last post, but I just like his stuff, OK? But before I go on, I have to come clean with you: I actually used to HATE this album, and not even because of the music. I thought the naming system of the album was pretentious — what a dumb reason to not listen to an album much, right? But I’m older and somewhat wiser now, so I finally got over myself and listened to it, finding that I actually like it. And, after reading an article about Justin Vernon from The New York Times, I learned I’d misjudged him. He’s not pretentious. He’s just a guy from the Midwest who likes making music and never expected to get as big as he did.

• Frank Zappa - Finer Moments

  • This album cost $15 from my local record store and I didn’t notice because I was slightly overstimulated because they were having a big 20th anniversary sale and there were more people shopping than usual that day. It’s out of print so it was worth it though! I don’t have a lot to say other than that it is eclectic. But it’s Frank Zappa, so what would you expect?

• King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King

  • I remember trying to listen to this album after my girlfriend at the time introduced me to the album. Sadly, I was like 17 and little me was not ready for prog rock. But now, I can see why Pitchfork gave it a perfect 10. It’s definitely one of those kinds of albums where you just sit and listen to it without any other distractions, but the journey is worth it. (PS: I am new to listening to prog rock — if anyone reading this has some recs, let me know!)

• Nilüfer Yanya - My Method Actor

  • The best thing about this album is that there’s a lot of variety to it. From fuzzy guitars to more sparse tracks that highlight Yanya’s vocals, No two tracks feel the same.