Sleep vs. Animals

I’m beginning to suspect that some of the reason for my having gone down with three consecutive colds over the last six weeks is due to having really badly disturbed sleep as part of my general life. And most of those disturbances are currently being caused by our fucking bastard animals.

Hound is a pain in the arse during the night – she has this habit of lying down, then scratching the floor in order to try and get comfortable. We’ve tried a number of things, including moving her basket around to wherever she’s currently sleeping before we go to bed (i.e. if she’s sleeping in the hall during the night, the basket goes in the hall) but that doesn’t work – she just goes somewhere else to scratch. We’ve taken the rug by the back door up at night – it’s one of her main scratching targets – but she just goes somewhere else. Regardless, come about 1.30am or so, one of us will end up putting her in her cage, at which point she’ll sleep. Oh, and before anyone suggests it, if you just put her in the cage at night, she’ll bark and bark ’til she’s let out. No-win situation ’til she’s gone in there at about half one.

Psycho Cat on the other hand “just” sleeps in the crook of my knees. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Except overnight he becomes like a lead weight, to the extent that I can’t easily move him. No idea how he does it, but it means that when I want to turn over, it wakes me up sufficiently to move consciously around him. Even whacking the furry little fucker with my leg (not kicking as such, but usually filed under “fortuitous collisions”) while I move doesn’t make him move. We’ve tried moving him to Herself’s side of the bed (and to the bedside chair, among other locations) but I’m warm, so he keeps coming back.

Last night was an even more extreme example. Because I’m horribly snotty, and it all pools up in the back of my throat, while asleep at the moment I a) snore, and b) cough. So on bad nights, I’ve been sleeping in the spare room. I don’t mind – it means Herself can get some sleep without me sounding like an asthmatic gorilla in the background, plus I don’t worry as much about the snoring.

Anyway, last night I went in to the spare room at about midnight, and closed the door. By that time Hound had already done her “scratching the floor to get comfortable” thing a couple of times and been yelled at, but that was generally OK.

Half an hour later, there’s scratching outside the door of the spare room. I yell at Hound, but it doesn’t stop. Eventually I get up, open the door. Yes, it’s fucking Psycho Cat, who also won’t give up on the scratching ’til he comes in. Resigned, I go back to the spare bed (a sofa-bed, I should explain – and thus rather narrow as I can’t be arsed pulling it all down at 1 in the morning) get under the quilt, and feel Psycho Cat jumping up onto my feet, then – yes – back into the crook of my knees.

Half an hour after that, Hound goes into terminal floor-scratching, gets yelled at, and I get up to put her in the cage. Which, of course, pissed off Psycho Cat, as it disturbed him from his comfy location.

I eventually got to sleep properly about two, half-two. (For obvious reasons, my last ‘awake’ thought didn’t involve checking the time) Psycho Cat was back behind my knees, Hound was in her cage, and Herself was in the other bed.

But when all that’s considered, it does make me think that it might work as at least some of the explanation of why I’m feeling so run-down…