Getting out of bed in the morning

is not something everyone likes. I know that even though I am a "morning" sort of person myself. 

My siblings and I simply were not allowed to "sleep in". We had to be up and on the move no later than seven in the morning. It was what my mother expected. It is what she did herself. The Senior Cat followed her example. 

The reason for this was simple. My mother worked as a full time teacher and then school principal. She simply did not have the time to lie in bed dozing. Even at weekends she did not have the time to do this or allow us to do this. Things had to be done.

My brother and I are still early risers. I sometimes need to be up very early for the purposes of work. At other times I know there are things I need to do. If I do them at that time then the rest of the day can be devoted to other things without the anxiety of feeling I need to get that letter written, read something for a student, compile a word list or anything else. I can also put a load of washing on and perhaps do some other household task.

No, I am not a particularly well organised sort of cat. The house is clean but it is untidy.  Nevertheless I do get things done. 

Middle Cat gets up later these days but she also tends to go bed much later. Her husband has a job which can involve making phone calls to other parts of the world late at night. She will almost always wait for him to finish those first. For years though she was like our mother. She had to see her husband and two children off to work before going to work herself. 

I don't know what the Black Cat does but she is still working so I assume she has to be out of bed fairly early. 

There must be many other people who are the same on their working days. When I was at university I had a Chinese student. She was a mature age student who had arrived speaking almost no English. I was asked to work with her. Like my mother she had to see her husband off to work and her two daughters to school. Somehow she also managed to cycle to the hall of residence I was living in by seven in the morning. I would give her half an hour of tuition and then she would cycle home again - in all sorts of weather.  The only morning she was late was the morning she had a puncture a short distance from me. We used the time that morning to make sure she could ask for a new tube at the local bike shop. 

I thought of all this yesterday when I was talking to a mother who lives in the next street.  She picked up the two spare garden pots I had promised her and said with a sigh, "I might as well do this now. Nobody else is out of bed yet."

It made me wonder yet again if mothers do get up earlier than everyone else. I think they must. Has anyone ever done any research?