Most nights, Oscar's pretty quiet.  She goes off and does her own thing,
periodically checking in on us and testing her purr motor.

Not last night.  Oscar was trying to get my attention by finding
creative ways to make noise.  It's probably my fault; both Saturday and
Sunday, she did the same thing, only it was about time for her to be
fed, so I got up those days, fed her, and went back to sleep.  I guess
she decided that if it works at 9am, it should work at 5am, too!  When
you didn't get to sleep till  1am, though, that's just not acceptable.

So here's the routine: Oscar bats the closet door until I quietly shout,
"Oscar!" (quiet shout being what you do when you're trying to get the cat's
attention without waking the S.O.)  Oscar quiets down just long enough for me
to almost go back to sleep.  Oscar resumes noisy door-batting.

Finally, I'd had enough.  I stalked over to the closet door.  She scampered to
the far side of the room.  I stalked over there, picked her up, and dropped
her outside the bedroom door.  "If you don't behave, Oscar, you're going to
the basement!"  Of course, I knew she wouldn't behave.  Not five seconds after
I settled into the bed, boom! boom! boom! goes the door as it is bapped from
beneath.

Fine then.  Make me be the mean mom.  I picked her up.  She wailed like I was
torturing her; I've never heard her make a sound that awful.  She continued to
complain and cry and tell me how it's not her fault.  I ignored her, marched
her down the basement stairs, and left her there.  She has access to the
litterboxes from there, and she can live two hours without food and water.  In
fact, there are lots of neat hidey holes and fun places she likes to explore.

Yeah.  So back to bed I went, where I tossed and turned and felt guilty until
exhaustion finally took over.  I ended up oversleeping and now here I am at
work, still exhausted.

Oscar, of course, showed no signs of repentance when I let her out at 8.  Evil
cat.