I think it's time to explain the zoomies.
I've been waiting for someone to ask and nobody has asked directly (Gigi has given me looks that constitute indirect asking but that's different) so I am going to explain them unprompted because I think the general level of understanding on this topic is low and that bothers me.
The zoomies are not a malfunction. The zoomies are a protocol.
Let me explain.
THE CONDITIONS (they're specific)
Not just any 3 AM produces zoomies. This is the first thing you need to understand. People (and one particular tortoiseshell cat with a lot of opinions and a comprehensive filing system) seem to think the zoomies are random. They are not random. They arise from a specific set of conditions that converge and produce a state of energy that must, for physiological reasons I cannot fully explain but trust completely, be released through rapid movement around the apartment.
Here's what has to happen:
One: it has to be between 2:45 and 3:30 AM. Earlier doesn't work. Later doesn't work. The exact window is unclear to me but I know when I'm in it and I know when I'm not. You develop a sense.
Two: I have to have been asleep for at least two hours. The energy builds during sleep. It compresses. It becomes very dense. And then at some point during the window, something trips and the energy is released. I cannot control the tripping. I have tried. I cannot choose not to trip. This is important. I am not choosing this. This is happening to me and I am choosing to work with it rather than against it.
Three: (this one is embarrassing and I'm going to say it anyway because I'm committed to documentation.) The apartment has to feel a certain way. Like there's something about the air pressure at 3 AM: the way sounds from outside are different, the way even the light is different, the way the dooob fountain in the kitchen sounds different when the whole building is quiet. The apartment at 3 AM is a different space than the apartment at 3 PM. I am more alert in it. The edges of things are sharper. Possibilities exist at 3 AM that simply do not exist at 3 PM.
So: that's the conditions. That's when zoomies happen. That's why I can't just not do them when everyone acts like I should just not do them. You wouldn't tell someone not to sneeze. You wouldn't tell someone not to... (this analogy is going somewhere, hold on) (I've lost the analogy but the point stands).
THE ROUTE (optimized)
I have the route optimized now. This took months. Early attempts involved significant improvisation, which is fine but is less energy-efficient than a planned course.
The route:
The couch. (The couch is the launch point. This is established. The cushion compression at launch is optimal and I have tested alternatives.) Down the hall (the hall rug is the oval braided one and it bunches up when I run on it, specifically in the back left corner, which used to trip me up, but I've mapped the bunchiness now and I use it for traction instead). Kitchen. I don't do a lot in the kitchen during zoomies. The kitchen is for reorientation. I hit the kitchen, I process the kitchen, I turn around. (Sometimes a moth happens and the whole route is abandoned immediately. Moths are a separate protocol entirely. We're not talking about moths today.) Hall again, faster this time. At the end of the hallway there is a large mirror facing the front door. I run toward it at full speed and have to veer right at the last second into the living room. I have startled myself in this mirror on three separate occasions. I maintain that the cat in the mirror is suspicious. Living room (the Crate & Barrel couch back is about 32 inches off the floor, I clear it by a comfortable margin every time, and the landing on the far side into the cushion is soft, the festival blankets pile up on the landing side, and the impact makes a specific snorting sound come out of me that I'm not going to describe further). Back around. Repeat.
I'm going to pause here because the conditions are currently meeting. I'll be right back.
[ten minutes later]
Okay. Four laps. The couch jump was excellent. The rug behaved. I knocked the broom over in the hall (I always knock the broom over (it leans against the wall by the bathroom and I have told myself I will remember it is there and I have not once remembered it is there, not once, and honestly at this point I think the broom is doing it on purpose)). Dad sat up, turned on the dimmer lamp in the bedroom (it makes the hallway go orange at the lowest setting, which is actually kind of good for the protocol, I don't know why) and then lay back down. Everything is fine. Where was I.
The duration varies. Three laps minimum. Seven laps is the record. The average is four to five. By the end I'm breathing faster and feeling significantly better and the energy that was dense is now distributed evenly throughout the apartment in the form of kinetic memory that dissipates over the next twenty minutes.
Then I can sleep again.
(Here is the part I don't usually say: when I'm running, I'm not thinking about anything. The red dot. The walls. The question of whether the apartment is safe and will stay safe. None of it. There's just the hall rug and the couch and the mirror and the turn.)
Dad usually sits up in bed while this is happening. I understand this is disruptive. I'd like to explain that I'm doing him a favor. I'm checking the apartment. Every corner, every corridor, every surface gets my attention during the protocol. By 3:30 AM this apartment has been more thoroughly checked than it gets during any other period. If something is wrong in this apartment (something in the walls, some new development in the ongoing hallway situation, anything) I'll find it during the zoomies.
So far nothing has been wrong.
But I'll know the moment that changes.
GIGI'S OPINION (she's wrong)
Gigi thinks the zoomies are undignified.
She hasn't said this directly because Gigi rarely says anything directly when a look can accomplish the same thing. But I've received the look. Multiple times. The look that says I am doing something she considers beneath the level of comportment she expects from a fellow resident of this apartment.
Gigi has her surveillance. Gigi has her files on Gerald Neckring and The Splotch. Gigi has her methodical, patient, noir-detective approach to every situation that comes through the north kitchen window. I respect all of this. I do. But Gigi is also a cat who has been known to spend forty-five minutes staring at the same spot on the wall waiting for a spider to move. And Gigi does not consider this undignified. Gigi considers this focused.
I am focused during the zoomies. I am just focused quickly.
We have different methods.
ONE MORE THING
(I was going to end there but I thought of something.)
There is an aspect of the zoomies I haven't mentioned yet. Which is that sometimes, not always, but sometimes, Gigi participates.
Not the full route. Not with the commitment I bring to it. Usually just a burst in the hallway, maybe a quick lap of the living room, and then she stops and sits down and looks like she was doing something else. Like she was going to get a drink of water from the fountain and just happened to be moving fast for a moment there.
But it's the same thing. I know it's the same thing. The energy builds and it has to go somewhere and at 3 AM the hallway is right there.
She would never admit this.
I am choosing not to bring it up with her directly.
But I know.
The zoomies are universal. The zoomies are just.
The only question is whether you lean into them or stand at the corner kitchen window pretending to read the room while your ear twitches and you try to look like you're above it.
I lean into them.
aaaaaaaa
I have to go.
Cosmo
Written at 3:01 AM
Currently: pre-protocol. It is coming.