We woke up early, voluntarily, on Saturday mornings. Our first challenge: our parents, on the living room floor, asleep. Beyond, the most magical contraption, screen glistening. The mission: to reach the big round button on the lower right – it was red – and hope the power had not been cut overnight, the antenna were aligned, and the volume was muted when we pressed ON, holding our breaths.

Sometimes we got caught. More often, however, fortune favoured the brave, crawling little ones with big Saturday morning ambitions. Crouching, we watched the garbled screen, hardly daring to blink, rubbing our noses like rabbits when excitement made them itchy.

We knew it was six thirty when the national anthem would begin. We could not hear it of course, but saw the flag appear on screen, austere in black and white because those were the only colours then. After the anthem, a patriotic songs played. It did not matter that they were on mute. God, War, and Country. We knew the gist.

If we were still lucky – if our parents were still asleep, if there was no special broadcast of national emergency – at seven a.m., the flag disappeared, and to our star-dazzled eyes, to our held breaths, the cartoons played.

Tom and Jerry, seven to eightonSaturday mornings, on the only channel of the only television I had ever seen. We did not have one at home, so how we waited for those Friday nights. The weekly sleepovers at Teta and Geddo’s so Mamy and Papi could go out. Before bed, the grownups watched The News, fatally boring, fatally long, while we children had our own party: a makeshift picnic on the floor. Cheese and tomato sandwiches Teta turned over on the gas burner till the extremities were crisp and the insides, gloriously molten. The mandatory cups of milk, and then maybe, if we were good, a sip of soda. We were to be quiet and not disturb. We did not mind the silent Fridays; we mimed remembered or made up Tom and Jerry scenes in preparation for Saturday.

We were sent to bed, never protesting, never on Friday nights. It left the grownups perplexed, but we never explained. Never explained that the sooner we slept the sooner morning came. And morning on Saturdays at our grandparents was almost like Christmas day.

Saturday morning always came, and the cartoons rarely failed. Tom and Jerry had us stifling giggles, learning new tricks, never good ones. It drove our imaginations wild and got us into trouble. It made life seem simple, and because we believed it, it was. Simple and simple to be happy in, eating cheese sandwiches on the floor, playing cat and mouse, sometimes tripping on carpets, trusting all would end well anyway.

Eighty years ago, two men drew a cat and mouse in the middle of a world war. Little was easy, or happy, or certain then. Nothing was funny. Little is easy or certain now, but just the other day, I glimpsed a cat chasing a mouse on a screen. I smiled. I knew that episode.

I watched for a few minutes, then walked on, pushing a pram in which two gurgling, giggling toddlers were getting impatient. They had their own mischief to plan and execute. They have yet to meet Tom and Jerry. I fear and look forward to the day they will. They will come, those Saturday mornings.