I open my eyes and just stare at the ceiling. Again. It’s morning again. The same Sunday morning again. For like the fiftieth time. I stopped counting, I stopped caring. I know everything that’s going to happen when I get out of bed, and I hate thinking about it. Instead I let my mind go blank and stare at the ceiling.

A small weight lands on my feet. My cat, Grizzabella. She meows at me, batting my toes. She wants breakfast. If I don’t get up and feed her soon, she’ll knock the lamp off my bedside table. She’s done that all five times I didn’t get up right away when she bugged me for food this morning. And then she sat and watched while I cursed and grumbled and cleaned up the mess.

Stupid cat doesn’t know any better. Especially since, for her, it’s the first time every time. Not like for me. No one else notices the time loop except for me.

And I don’t want to get up and go out there and have more of the same conversations over and over with people who don’t know they’re stuck like I am. So I don’t get up. I stay in bed.

The mattress and bedding shift ever so slightly under the cat’s weight as she makes her way across the bed. She leaps, and there’s a light thud of her paws against the wooden bedside table. I don’t need to look to know she’s sitting right next to the lamp.

“Not again, Grizz, please…” I moan. Not that saying anything has stopped her before. Not that she can understand me. She’s a cat. I wait for the smash of glass and cheap electrics on the floor.

But there’s no smash. Instead, Grizz hops from the nightstand back to me. She curls up on my chest, her purrs vibrating the blanket over me.

We make eye contact, and an impossible thought occurs to me, but no less impossible than anything else about my current situation.

“You remember, don’t you?” I say. “You remember me getting upset about the lamp before. You remember.”

I reach up to scratch her ears, and she purrs harder. It’s soothing. And so is the knowledge that at least I’m not alone in this bizarre time-loop mess.