Like many people, I always set the alarm clock when I go to bed. But, like many, I rarely need it.

That’s because at some point before dawn, one of the cats positions himself in the hallway, clears his throat and loudly announces, in cat language of course, “I want my breakfast NOWWWWWWWWWW!”

If I ignore him, which I usually do, he moves closer and does it again. And again. And again.

Sometimes he even jumps on the bed to make sure I get the message.

No one else in the family seems to hear this (fakers!), but I am fairly certain that I will not be turning off the alarm clock, turning over and falling back to sleep any time soon.

The cat won’t let me.

Spring and summer are a different story.

In warm weather, when we sleep

with the windows open, the birds wake me up before the alarm. Even the cat seems to realize he can’t get a meow in edgewise with all that racket.

Dogs and babies also have a way of eliminating the need for any alarm clocks in the household.

Our dog is lazy – even he ignores the demanding cat in the morning –but I have known dogs that spring to life at exactly 6:01 a. m. and NEED TO GO OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW.

Ah, yes, for many of us, waking up is never hard to do.

A friend who lives in the city tells me that she will never oversleep because a truck makes a daily delivery on her street –loudly.

Another person I know tells me that the sound of her upstairs neighbor’s treadmill got her moving in the morning.

For about a year, I woke up every morning –again before dawn –because a car went by with loud music playing at the same time every day.

Was the driver going to work? Coming home from work? Or maybe I really didn’t want to know.

Of course, some sounds people grow accustomed to and eventually sleep through. I lived on Main Street in a village for a while, and it took me several months to sleep through the sounds of the trucks driving by at night.

When I was a kid, my family rented a cottage near railroad tracks. Those night trains took some getting used to.

And one time years ago when I was staying at a friend’s house in New York City, the sounds of the subways kept me awake as I tried to sleep on her living room sofa.

When I mentioned it, the response was a yawn and something along the lines of “What subways?”

I tend to be a light sleeper, especially after 4 a. m. or so. Soon the snowplows will be my alarm clock.

But not everyone is as easily awakened in the morning as I am. My father used to tell me that when he was a single, young reporter working at a newspaper in Michigan, he had to get up very early.

Fearing he would oversleep, he would set his wind-up alarm clock and place it in a metal pot across the room, so it would ring very loudly. That way, he would have to get out of bed to shut it off.

Years later, when I was growing up, he never needed an alarm clock to wake up, but I always thought his story was hilarious.

Hmmm, maybe what the man needed was a hungry cat.