Macintosh.
The oldest cat in the building and the one who decides what “urgent” means. Which is: almost nothing, and certainly not before noon.
deep in quarterly review
Seniority, expressed entirely through sleeping.
Macintosh has been here longest, and it shows in the way he moves through a kitchen: unhurried, unbothered, and directly through the middle of whatever you are carrying. Gray coat, white bib, business casual permanently. He does not run. He has not run in years. He has people for that.
His contribution to the bakery is best described as presence. He arrives, selects the warmest surface within a two-metre radius of the oven, and settles into it for the duration of the bake. Every loaf that leaves this kitchen has risen under his supervision, in the sense that he was asleep nearby the entire time.
This is not laziness. This is delegation, refined over many years into something close to an art form.
The schedule.
4:50am — Wakes the humans. Not because he wants breakfast, though he does. Because the levain needs checking and someone has to hold everyone accountable.
5:15am — Returns to bed, work done.
9:00am — Relocates to the windowsill for the morning sun rotation. This is a different nap and he will not hear otherwise.
1:00pm — The oven is on. Macintosh takes up his post on the chair nearest to it and enters what the household calls Deep Loaf.
4:30pm — Briefly supervises the cooling rack from a distance of six feet, one eye open.
Evening — Sits on the recipe card you need. Not the whole notebook. The exact card.
Operating notes.
He will occupy the one chair you need and make you feel unreasonable for wanting it. He does not look at cameras — every photograph of Macintosh is taken in profile, because that is the only angle he permits. And if you have set something down on a warm surface, consider it his now. That includes the proofing basket, the oven mitt, and on one occasion, a cooling boule that had to be quietly rehomed.
He does not touch the bread. Nothing here touches the bread. But he thinks about it, at length, with his eyes closed.