When Andrew and I first started dating, he really didn’t like my cat. In fact, the first time we hung out at my old apartment, drinking wine together, he seemed rather horrified by the fact that I even possessed an animal. As our relationship progressed, I kept waiting for the day when Andrew would accept, nay, LOVE Harrison, the beat of my heart.
Now that we live together, they’ve sort of learned to accept one another. Sometimes, I’ll even catch them snuggling, which warms me to the bottom of my heart. See?
Lately, though, it seems that my boys have conspired in a plot of pure evil.
I am a picky sleeper. And by picky, I mean light. I am not a light sleeper the entire night, but that falling-asleep time? CRITICAL. I need it to be dark, silent and cold. I need to be able to move about through the variety of stomach, back, side, back, side and stomach positions that falling asleep provides. Andrew, on the other hand, is one of those Freaks Of Nature who fall asleep the second their head hits the pillow.
For Andrew, sleep means SNORE SNORE SNORE. Usually, I can deal. I poke Andrew, utter a snarky word about STOPSNORINGNOWOMG, and he usually stops. I can then continue the sleep routine, and fall asleep and get my required 6+ hours so that I am not an insufferable human the following day.
Harry cat is usually a very good little kitty. However, at night, something else overtakes his body. Suddenly, my nightstand becomes Disneyland For Cats. He wants to explore run around and make noise. Harry has also decided lately to meow. Not just the quiet, cute, happy noise of a cat, but the LOUD, LONG, conversational meowing that in my opinion should happen during the DAY.
Combine these two things AT NIGHT? And all I want is sweet death.
My past 3 evenings have gone something like this: Start to fall asleep. SNORE. Poke Andrew to thwart snoring. Start to fall asleep again. MEOWWWWW. Push cat off bed, close eyes. SNORE. Poke Andrew. MEOW. SNORE. MEOW. Brief, blessed, lovely silence. SNOREMEOW.
WIPE TEARS OF ANGER, UTTER EXPLETIVES.
I know that some of y’all are going to be all, “Wait until you have kids, you’ll be grateful for one hour of sleep!” And to that I say: Listen, y’all. I DON’T HAVE KIDS. I am still in the time of my life where I AM CHOOSING SLEEP. There are reasons for this. I am not ready to give up those sweet, sweet hours just yet.
But soon, I may be choosing to sleep elsewhere, away from the noisiest mammals ever to live.
Copyright © 2012
Hi Amy! I am commenting for the first time on your blog because…oh. my. how. I. can. so. related. to this post. A cat that wants to have a chat in the middle of the night, a boyfriend who snores (however, sometimes in the morning, after waking ME up with his snoring, he talks about how he didn’t sleep well…).
Sleep is important…the cat and the boyfriend won’t have a happy and fulfilling life if they continue to team up with the “snoremeow (LOVE this word)”….
I can definitely relate!! I have 2 cats and at about 3 in the morning they decide it’s play time. I usually have to end up kicking them both out of the room and at least one of them will whine at the door. My boyfriend sleeps through all of this, snoring and all.
OH MY GOSH! I can totally relate – I have pretty constant insomnia and have to take pills every night to be able to stay asleep, but I’m a REALLY light sleeper too – at one point (before the pills!) my nighttime routine included a padded sleeping mask, sites like SimplyNoise.com running through the night, Gravol tablets, hot milk and earplugs. Every night!!
My little cat is the sweetest thing in the world, but at night – if I left the bedroom door open, she’d come in, knock things over, and walk across the pillows pulling my hair at 3 am. If I closed the door, she’d sit outside whining incessantly. So our solution now is to use the spare bedroom, keep her food, litterbox and bed in there, put a towel under the door, and that seems to do the trick. Plus earplugs.
I feel your pain!! *Hug*
Oooohh… I have always said that the man I end up with better not be a snorer. Because I will literally make him sleep in a different room.
My cat just likes to take over half the bed. He doesn’t make much noise, but man, he can sprawl out better than a human being. It’s kind of impressive actually…
Isn’t it funny, though, how much we still love these guys—and by “guys,” I mean the boyfriends and the felines????
lol I choose sleep too!
But when our puppies were really little, forget it. We were up with them twice a night, they were crying, bored, had to go to the bathroom… seriously. I was a big preview of parenthood that lasted for four months, only we had the benefit of being able to leave them during the day.
Apparently earplugs (the wax ones, not the foam ones) are awesome for this stuff, if you can deal with hearing your heart beat in your ears.
Which for the record, I cannot. lol
Save for the quiet (I can fall asleep to the TV or sounds of video games in the background if need be, which I did for awhile!) I am similar in that I don’t like a lot of light, and I need to be able to flail about in bed before I fall asleep. It takes me sometime to get there, lately about an hour before I’m out cold.
I have taken to leaving my cell on silent so that I don’t get interrupted by it’s beeping and chiming or making my dog go to bed earlier, even if he doesn’t want to, so that he’s not let in my room at midnight.
I say we should embrace our sleep while it’s an option.
in total love with that picture of the two of them. here’s hoping you find that perfect solution.
xo
So, as you know, I recently had a cat that did the nighttime meowing thing, so I totally understand your pain. From everything I read, you’re supposed to ignore it totally. Act as if you’re deaf. Now, this might go on for a week. But from what I read, the average cat will “get it” after a week that meowing at night provokes no response whatsoever (neither positive nor negative). It helped immensely when we had our cat.
No advice on the human, though.
BwaHAHAHAHA! You crack me up. BEST. TITLE. EVER.
Ennnyywhhho. My cat likes to bodyslam my bedroom door if I’m not awake at the early hour of his liking. He takes a running start at the refrigerator, skids across the hardwood floors, and BOOM!!!
Repeat. And repeat. And if it’s Saturday, repeat until about 11 AM.
PFFT hahaha! As a relatively new visitor here, this is an awesome post to come through my reader.
I have no cat advice, but for snoring I hear there are those nose strips that are supposed to assist airflow. And reduce noise. I cannot attest to their quality.