Predawn hour is best time of day

Well before the first hint of dawn, I listen to the sounds our house makes in the night. Whirring overhead fan. Purring air purifier. Barely audible radio voices — KBIA at 5:30 a.m., connecting us to NPR and the world. Click. The thermostat register checks its own temperature, set at 65 degrees for the night. Clink. Ice drops onto a pile of cubes in the freezer bin.

Still one more sound catches my attention. Unfamiliar, it is curious enough to have me leave the warmth of down feathers, wool blankets and Kit to find its source. But first, I slip my bare feet into chocolate-colored, high-topped, fleece-lined Ugg boots — replacements for my old pair purchased in New Zealand long before the world decided these woolly boots from Down Under were, in fact, not so Ugg-ly after all.

Ignoring traditional house robes, I opt for a warm, oatmeal-colored, oversized sweater that almost reaches my knees and add a sleeveless fleece-lined vest the color of Burmese garnets. Catching my image in the glass porch door, my white pajama pants float beneath the sweater and vest like Pakistani shalwar kameez. For an instant, I see my beautiful sisters, Molly and Kim, in the late 1970s. Dressed in traditional pajamalike pants and long tops, they are wrapped in cashmere pashmina shawls as a cold dawn rises over the ancient city of Gabedero in Sindh Province, Pakistan.

That sound again, and I’m in the warming room, where I discover the fan switch on the front of the Buck stove has been blowing all night over hot embers stowed under a pile of gray ash. Sifting under the pile, I uncover two live shards of last night’s fire and add twigs and a small piece of split wood. Soon, I have a fire humming back to life in the stove.

One final sound. A cat scratches at the basement door. Fanny, our sharp-eared calico Manx, has heard me padding around. It’s still dark outside; nonetheless, morning is under way as far as this cat is concerned. Feed me, she insists while weaving in, around and just ahead of my feet — a feline skater executing perfect figure eights on icy linoleum. The tinny-tight snap of a tuna can opening, instantly bringing our three cats to their bowls.

Only then do I push in the coffee button. Clear water runs through dark ground java and cinnamon — drip, drip dripping dark brown into the carafe below.

Milk steamed and coffee poured, I head for the couch across from the now-glowing Buck stove, adding a large piece of split firewood on my way.

Predawn, my favorite hour of the day. In touch with the house and its living, breathing sounds, I am fully awake and at peace. The fire, a plaid, wool blanket and two sprawling lap cats conspire to keep me warm.

Settled in at last, I join the rich cast of characters in two books by Sri Lankan-born Canadian author Michael Ondaatje — colorful companions for what remains of the night.

In “The Cat’s Table,” an 11-year-old boy makes a life-altering journey by ship from Ceylon to England in 1954. In his lyrical travel memoir, “Running in the Family,” Ondaatje, who is in his early 40s, reconnects with his eccentric Ceylonese-Dutch family and the landscape he left as a child, moving first to England and then relocating to Canada in 1962.

Upon arriving back in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, Ondaatje identifies sounds in the night, linking him to his distant childhood there. Reading his description of a peacock’s disturbed cry when awakened from its perch high in the trees, I’m instantly linked through memory to a mysterious peacock on a walkabout many years ago that spent a night in a walnut tree at our former Breakfast Creek home.

Then, as light spills from Ondaatje’s pen over flaming tropical flamboyant trees, I look up to witness the arrival of dawn at Boomerang Creek, just this side of winter.