It is five o’clock in the morning. The temperature on the more reliable of my several outside thermometers (I collect thermometers like I collect everything else) reads 18 degrees below zero. (Son Seed claimed 22 below at his house.)

We have central heating but we don’t turn it on. The temperature inside our dome home was 63 when I first got up at 3 a.m. to toss a couple more logs into our venerable Brunco woodstove.

After 40-some years, we still heat with firewood. But we supplement with cats.

Sleeping in our recliners is a habit Honey and I gradually acquired because laying flat on the bed left us with aching joints, and napping in our recliners in the living room didn’t. It’s also a handy arrangement when we have house guests. We give them the bedroom.

When I first woke up at three this morning I had only one cat, Alex, the littlest one, a welcome, living warmth on the blankets between my legs. Leo, Russell and Uncle Felix all were sleeping on my wife, Leo curled around her neck like a fur collar. Alex stayed with me despite several interruptions to stoke the fire throughout my early-morning wakefulness.

When my wife asked yesterday if Russell was still my favorite of the three cats we raised from kittens, I said no, it’s Alex now.

“Alex is little and sweet. He comes to me and asks to be picked up, and lets me carry him around,” I said. “I love him.”

“I can’t believe you’re so fickle,” she said, but she’s just peeved because she has been grooming Alex as the replacement cat for our dear departed Henry, who was her special friend and companion.

As far as sleeping arrangements go, the three ex-kittens are ecumenical in choosing whom to bless with their furry, purry BTUs through the night. Honey usually has more ex-kittens than me, plus Uncle Felix, which is good because she needs the heat more.

I refer to our old black and white cat as “uncle” to the youngsters because he fits the role: an old bachelor still living at home, bland, harmless, keeping to himself, not playful, an overweight eunuch whose main goal in life is to be well-fed. His bulk makes him a veritable furnace, generating more heat than the three youngsters combined.

Felix was terrified of the kittens at first, but their fearlessness and curiosity eventually wore him down. Now he doesn’t even notice when one of them curls up beside him on our laps. Then there is our female cat Fanny, who earned the nickname Snit with her bad attitude. Fanny could be nice when she was a kitten, and even slept on my lap when she was young. But her mother was feral, and probably dad was too, which would account for developing a bipolar and anti-social personality as an adult.

Aint Snit’s initial reaction to the three kittens was hissing, swatting and hiding, but their good manners have mellowed her somewhat. At times she almost plays with them, and we catch her sleeping above our heads on the backs of our recliners.

It was so cold this morning that for the first time ever we feared for the safety of our two neutered male barn cats, Pumpkin and Miss Betty. I caught them at feeding time, caged them and put them in our basement for the time being. My hands have the scratches to prove it was not a willing relocation. Pumpkin I’m sure will forgive and forget as long as I feed him, but it took me a whole year to even touch Miss Betty, and he/she/it may never forgive me. (We thought he was a girl and the name stuck.)

Seven days of the high temperature not reaching above 30 degrees appears to have set a record hereabouts, says the weatherman on WTOV 9. The tractor won’t start, it’s too cold for the kids to sled ride or ice skate, and just going outside is dangerous.

“I don’t remember it ever being this cold,” Honey said, but I reminded her of several pieces I wrote about Focky the Rooster, including a column published in The Review on Feb. 1, 2003. Focky was found dead in the chicken coop on the morning of Jan. 27, when our home thermometer showed minus 24 degrees.

His owner, Brendan Fisher of nearby Hardin’s Run Road, believed Focky froze to death because of his proud, aloof nature: he roosted alone instead of nesting among the warm hens.

Perhaps if I read the cautionary tale of Focky the Rooster to our cat Snit she would quit acting like snooty royalty and come down to join the other cats on our laps on these cold nights.

A five-cat night. Now, wouldn’t that be something?