the smelly ancient one

I wake up on average 3 times each night. It regularly occurs at 2am, 4am and 6am. Each time, I would hear him getting up (his nails are terribly long and thus noisy), hear the shushing sounds of water aka pee and I would have jumped out of bed even before he is done peeing. It's an automatic reflex. I would immediately set him aside once he's done, so that he would not step on his pee, grab the mop from the balcony and clean up his mess. If he messed up in the living room and no one heard it, Ricky would start whining until someone wakes up to attend to him and the mess. Usually, he would settle back to sleep once we've cleaned up; but occasionally, he would be whining softly for a prolonged period and I would have to keep sayang-ing him.

On many an occasion, I would lose my cool, exasperated at the loss of my much needed sleep and handle him rather roughly. But honestly, Ricky never had a choice or say in the current state of affair. We were the ones who put him through the surgery, deliberately prolonging his life when it might actually have been his time. So we have to bear the consequences of our decision and make the best out of the situation.