My cat pretends to be the alarm

It’s really weird, but it doesn’t matter what time the alarm is set for, my cat (Eve) will always wake us up about 10 minutes before the alarm goes off. It doesn’t matter if it’s set for 6am or 6:30am or even 8am. She will always start scratching at the mat – her signal to be fed – ten minutes before the alarm is due to go off.

It sucks! The last thing you want to do is wake up BEFORE the alarm, but if you try to ignore her, she just keeps on scratching. If you succeed in ignoring her – even though it’s keeping you awake – she will then jump up on the bed and stand on the pillow, above your head, looking at you until you get up in disgust. And then she jumps off the bed and runs gleefully into the kitchen, waiting for you to come in and provide her food.

Once you give her the food, you can then go back to bed, uninterrupted… for about 5 minutes. And then she’ll start scratching again to be let outside.

So when she wakes us up before the alarm, there’s just no going back to sleep. Bloody annoying.

Why the hell does she do that? HOW does she do it?