Day 98: Years ago, I saw a cartoon of two cats sprawled on the back of a couch. One was saying to the other, "I just don't know how I can get by on only seventeen and a half hours of sleep a day." I was amused by the accuracy of the observation, but it raised a question in my mind: How can a cat who spends 90 percent of life relaxing or otherwise idle still have the muscular vitality to leap three or four feet into the air to catch a fly and then take off running at high speed without a warm-up? It made me painfully aware (perhaps literally so) that as chemical machines go, the human body is astonishingly inefficient. Could I slam-dunk a basketball immediately upon getting out of bed? Could I run a mile at full tilt without first stretching? Certainly not now, not at this age, and probably not when I was in peak form forty years ago. Tippy is no spring chicken. I see signs of his age creeping into his eyes and posture, yet he does dashes like a kitten. Maybe the secret lies in that seventeen and a half hours of sleep he gets each day. Maybe I should give that a try.
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