I had one, once — the glass coffee table, not a cat — and the image is unforgettable.
To set the scene, my neighbour had an overly friendly cat, which often when I got home from work would be at my front door waiting to get let in.
Yes, let in to my house, not his.
Despite my best efforts to move him he would make a break through my legs and he’d be in.
After sprinting around and eluding me, tripping me up and leaving me on the floor looking at my roof he decided to plonk on the coffee table, his floof radiating outwards, and have a nap.
The gall of the creature, lying about on my coffee table, which from my undignified angle on the floor looked as the clouds do on hot days: soft and fluffy but pressed flat against an invisible barrier holding up the sky; albeit the cat was orange.
I’d never have noticed these clouds if I wasn’t coming back from lunch, following a cheeky 30-minute post-lunch nap (please no-one tell my editor).
Running around, with a million things on my mind, the helter-skelter nature of everyday life seems to offer fewer and fewer chances for reflection and contemplation as we sprint from thing to thing.
It’s what I love about this time of year.
From December to early January, some 60 to 70 per cent of the country’s workforce just downs tools, and the businesses which are still going are doing so with a shoestring staff.
Collectively, the whole country just sits in a pile of Christmas leftovers — ham, potatoes, ham, veggies, chicken, ham, turkey, maybe some ham — and switches the cricket on and the brain off.
You lose track of the days, you have multiple naps a day, and spend a lot of time doing my favourite activity: loafing like bread.
Time flows like the Goulburn — it’s murky and doesn’t look like it’s moving, but you know for a fact it is.
I’ve been thinking about this because it was one of the first times I’ve looked at the clouds like that in so long.
This Christmas and new year was by no means stress-free for people who did contract the spicy cough, but the surge started kicking in viciously just as everyone was due to head back to work.
A lot of people snuck in their holidays, even if they were a bit lower-key than they’d planned, and managed to switch off from the news and the world and the stress.
Your humble correspondent was not one of those people and, just like everyone else who hasn’t yet stopped for a break, I’m very tired (please tell my editor).
I can’t imagine how tired healthcare workers feel — on their feet in wards or out in PPE in testing queues in the hot sun.
Nothing makes you notice how exhausted you feel quite like everyone coming back into the office: peppy, bright-eyed and bushy tailed after their Christmas break, and looking up at the clouds on my Thursday afternoon, I breathed a sigh of relief.
My leave starts at 5pm on Friday. I was nearly there.
From then, my mind can meander as thick and slow as the Goulburn, and although the Christmas ham is gone, I can spend all the time in the world napping to my heart’s content, snoozing away like a cat on a coffee table.
I hope everyone gets a chance to slow down this summer. We need it.
Max Stainkamph is a journalist at The News.