Rawcatting

Or, rawdogging purrfected

It’s taken me 20+ years of living as an “adult” to accept that I like to start my mornings verrrrrrrry slowly. I don’t like alarm clocks, I don’t like immediately working out, I don’t like a rigid “morning routine” — but I do like a soft routine.

My current soft routine is as follows:

1. Wake up naturally. Twice. The first time doesn’t count because I’m still groggy. I want to be so awake that it feels ridiculous to remain in bed.

2. Get dressed and do my skincare. I leave off the sunscreen for now.

3. Make a matcha latte. If I’ve prepared the night before, make my protein smoothie while the water for the matcha is heating.

4. Grab my laptop and go outside. Mind you, this is a relatively new addition to the routine, since it was Arctically freezing until about two weeks ago. I have discovered that one area of my deck is a solar vortex that, when the sun is out, is at least 20 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature. Putting some sun on my skin (pre-sunscreen) makes my mood exponentially better throughout the rest of the day.

5. Do my NYT puzzles. In this exact order: Wordle, Connections, Strands, Mini, Midi, Sudoku (easy), Sudoku (medium). If I’m feeling frisky, I’ll try out the Crossword, too — but if it gets too challenging, I’m out.

6. Go inside and put on sunscreen. TBH, this is hit or miss, which means I should probably just put sunscreen on (on my face, at least) first thing.

7. Start whatever else I need/want to do that day. Work, writing, cleaning, etc. I’m finally ready.

Here’s the thing, though. Lately, a furry interloper has disrupted my routine. I believe you’ve all met Anderson:

Anderson, resident of Nowhere and Everywhere — but mostly, of my block of houses — captured my heart with his filthy street-paws as soon as we moved here. He’s become a daily visitor, and some days, he’s here literally all day.

So I can get through the first four steps of my routine, no problem. But Anderson has caught on to the outdoor portion of my routine and has been meeting me out back. As soon as I’ve settled in my chair, he asks to come up and visit by rising on his haunches and placing his two front paws on the side of my chair.

Anderson being the very well-fed, neutered-after-adulthood street cat that he is, there’s only room for him or my laptop on my lap. And of course, he wins. So we just sit there. For however long he wants. The other day, it was nearly 40 minutes.

You may have seen the youths on social media “rawdogging” as part of their self-care practice. And thank goodness they don’t mean it in the way that those of us over the age of 30 know it to mean. Rather, we’re talking about the term’s second definition in the Cambridge Dictionary:

rawdogging (noun, slang) /ˈrɑːˌdɑː.ɡɪŋ/ the act of doing an activity without anything to make it easier or help pass the time, for example to travel a long distance without a phone, entertainment, or food

I’ve come across videos of people in their early 20s — interestingly, it’s usually young men — rawdogging a lengthy flight or setting a timer and just sitting. We won’t get into whether recording and posting about oneself doing this negates the act itself. To each their own.

On one of Anderson’s visits this week, I realized that his co-opting my lap has caused me to inadvertently rawdog — or rawcat, as I’d rather call it. Absent anything in my hands except Anderson’s fur or my mug of matcha, I am forced to just … sit there. Listen to the birds. Watch the wind. Feel the sun.

And, inevitably, hear a song in my head.

I forgot to mention a rather shameful piece of my soft morning routine. I check my phone first thing, even though I know you’re not supposed to. My intention is to see if I have any Marco Polo messages waiting from my friend Caitlin, who lives 5 hours ahead of me in Europe, and to check to see if any important text messages have come in.

But handheld devices could give a shit about our intentions. Before my conscious mind can stop me, I’m looking at my email. I’m opening Instagram — just to check my DMs, I swear — and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

And somewhere in there, the seed of a song will be planted. It could be something as obvious as the music attached to a video on Instagram, or as insidious as an email newsletter discussing a resurgence of the 90s “baby tee” trend and mentioning Britney Spears. That’s all it takes. Next thing you know, I’m petting Anderson and “…Baby One More Time” is running through my head.

It happened every day this past week. Songs often pop into my head — I have a “musical” mind, I’ve been told. And when it happens as I’m going about my day, it’s somewhat muted by other distractions — what I’m doing, what I’m looking at, what I’m planning to do next. But when it happens when I’m doing literally nothing else, it’s positively maddening.

It makes me wonder how much of my mental energy is spent sifting through muck like this throughout the day. Is every video I watch, every email I read, every ad I scroll past, secretly planting seeds that, by the end of the day, leave my brain weed-ridden and exhausted?

Or, is it only the content that I see so early in the morning, when my brain is slate-clean, its soil freshly tilled, that these seeds are able to root themselves?

I think that’s worth exploring.

So this coming week, I’m doing an experiment. I will not look at my phone at all when I wake up. (Caitlin, wait for me!) I’m going to leave my phone in the bedroom, ringer turned up so I can hear it if someone calls. Because if something is really important, the person will call.

Songs might still pop into my head while I’m sitting with Anderson. But at least they’ll be because I put them there, as part of whatever brain-sorting needs to happen in the sacred space between when I rise from bed and when my day “officially” starts.

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