I do so much right now to work to optimize my sleep.

There’s the sleepy headphones, which is not what they should be called, but I wear those earbuds in my ears at night.

We have blackout curtains.

I’m playing white noise in those earbuds.

They also act as earplugs.

I’m doing a lot, and Lauren and I alternate who gets up early with the kids, but something wakes me up every day.

At 7 a.m., the automatic cat feeder goes off.

The automatic cat feeder goes off a lot.

One of our two cats eats too much, and so instead of free feeding, we trigger the food to come out at various times.

If we put all the food out at once, she eats it all at once, and then she gets mad and hungry later, so she gets little bits of food throughout the day, including at 7 in the morning.

Why does she get it at 7 in the morning?

Because otherwise, she comes up on Lauren’s face in the bed and starts yelling at Lauren to feed her, so the automatic feeder goes off.

Problem is, the sound of the food plunking into the metal bowl attached to the feeder wakes me up, or at least it did.

I wanted a solution, and the problem was we had various immovable parts that we couldn’t change.

Lauren’s not willing to have the food be out of our room, and she doesn’t want to sleep with our door open for the cats to be able to get out of the room to get food.

She doesn’t want to have a little door for the cats to use within our door, so if the cats are going to be locked in our room with us with the door closed and they can’t open it and the food’s going to be there and the cat has to be fed at 7 unless the cat can wake up Lauren, we have to figure out how can we have the automatic feeder trigger food silently.

You can’t replace the bowl.

The bowl nestles into the automatic feeder, and the automatic feeder doesn’t dispense food unless it detects that the bowl is there.

Great.

So I read various things and looked online, and that’s the same thing, but I’m just trying to make the story better.

So anyway, I did some research, and eventually I decided to order some silicon.

Silicon?

Silicon?

I don’t know.

One of those materials that you can buy as liners for your trays and pots and pans and whatnot.

And I traced a circle from the inside of the bowl.

I didn’t worry about the edges of the bowl or the lip or anything.

I just focused on the big bottom of the bowl and cut an imperfect but reasonably good circle.

Then I also ordered aquarium glue, aquarium safe glue, because it’s supposed to be good, it’s non-toxic, whatever else.

And overnight, between around 10.30 p.m., which is Sunny’s last feeding of the day, and 7 a.m., which is when the feeder goes off, although we’ve now moved to 7.05, because we’re going to start inching it ahead a little bit potentially too, I let that glue cure.

And I put a big heavy water bottle filled with water bottle on top of it to really lock it down there.

And only when that was all done was I willing to try it.

I didn’t want to have the silicon loose in there because the cat would take it and or food could get stuck underneath it.

And any kind of frayed edge would be tempting, etc.

So I wanted it to be really glued down nicely.

And then it was time for the big test.

Would the food cascading out of the machine be quieter?

And the answer is so much quieter.

Oh my gosh, I have really dampened the sound.

It’s not silent, but now it doesn’t bleed through my sleepy time headphones the way that it was before.

It’s a much softer kind of thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

Thump is too strong.

More of like a thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump versus a clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank.

It was just such a clanging before.

That was excellent foley work I did just now, by the way.

But anyway, instead of this loud metallic clanging of food hitting the metal bottom, it’s a much softer and more muted thrumming as the food hits the silicon.

And it’s a thin layer of silicon.

So I’m impressed that it’s working as well as it is, but it’s a game changer.

I have slept longer three days in a row ever since I did this arts project.

Arts and crafts project?

That’s the thing.

Arts and crafts project.

So anyway, I was pleased with my own handiness.

I will see if it keeps working.

That’s all I got.

I hope you’re having a wonderful Tuesday, February 3rd.

Goodbye.