Daylight Savings Time

Fall is here. As I watch out my window, the leaves are falling off the trees. Sometimes they get stuck on a window screen or on a spider web that's on the outside of the window. That's good for hours of entertainment. 

What's less entertaining--and much more perplexing--is a curious seasonal habit that humans have. Twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, they shift all their routine activities by one hour. It happened just the other day. Suddenly everything was one hour late, including our meals. 

This shift is called Daylight Savings Time. Actually, it's the shift to one hour earlier, which happens in the spring, that gets us onto Daylight Savings Time, while the shift to one hour later, which happens in the fall, gets us to Standard Time. But I only know this detail because my human has pedantic tendencies. Most of us just call the whole rigmarole Daylight Savings Time.



Daylight Savings Time is upsetting and disruptive to us cats, but observably so to humans as well. They get confused as to what they should be doing when and may have trouble getting to sleep on time or getting up on time. Apparently, the time shift can even cause accidents among humans. I'm not actually sure what kind of accidents they mean, but tripping over a cat while getting out of bed or cutting oneself while opening the cat-food can because of exceptional grogginess seem to be likely candidates.

Why, then, do they perform this strange and upsetting ritual? The term "Daylight Savings" suggests that they are trying somehow to conserve sunlight. And indeed, the part of the year during which they are on Daylight Savings Time is the sunnier part of the year. So Daylight Savings seems to work to increase sunlight. But frankly, I'm pretty sure that the days lengthen--and then shorten--of their own accord. I don't think the humans have anything to do with it. 

Humans get funny ideas, though. In the past, they used to believe that their ritual actions influenced the natural world, and they performed all sorts of rites to ensure the continued progression of the seasons. They are mostly over this narcissistic way of thinking--but perhaps not entirely. Daylight Savings Time appears to be a holdover from just such a primitive belief system. They appear to believe that, by undergoing this shift in time twice a year, they are ensuring the proper lengthening and shortening of the days. Probably most of them don't actually believe it literally anymore, but with humans, tradition dies hard.