Tag: #sleep

The cat came back the very same day

Cats, Health, Insomnia, Mental Health, Sleep

Rory, Rory, Rory. What am I going to do with you?

I’ve tried feeding him later at night so he’s not as hungry in the morning. I’ve tried closing him out of the bedroom at night. I’ve tried ignoring him. I’ve tried holding him down so he can’t knead on my throat.

But the cat just keeps coming back.

Rory is too smart for my own good. When we first got him, I was having insomnia. I’d wake up between 0130 and 0200 every morning and be unable to go back to sleep. Rory decided that this meant I was supposed to be up at this time, and I have not had an uninterrupted night of sleep since.

I tried untraining him, but that hasn’t worked. He has his mind set that I am awake at a certain time, and that’s that. Granted, he has started waking me up a tad later–like around 0215-0300–but the cat just keeps coming back.

Some mornings, like today, I can tell he just wants food. Still, I wait at least an hour until I feed him so he (hopefully) doesn’t get an immediate association between me waking up and him eating.

Some mornings, he just wants me up. I’ll try to go back to sleep only to have him come back an hour later and start in again. He doesn’t necessarily want anything in particular. In fact, sometimes he immediately goes off to the other room to go back to sleep himself. It’s like once I’m awake all is right with the world and he can rest easy knowing he did his job.

I know I should shut up and accept my fate, but there’s got to be a better way.

I’ll keep trying new things.

But the cat will still come back.

The weird sleep

Health, Sleep

Is there a medicine to take away weird dreams? If not, I feel there should be.

As any regular reader of this blog may know, I have troubles sleeping sometimes. Okay, often. Okay, almost every night. On top of that, I also usually have extremely strange, vivid dreams.

I am so tired of being tired. I take my medications like I’m supposed to, but I still have a lot of trouble staying asleep through the night and getting a good restful sleep.

*Sigh* I guess this post is turning into more of a bitchfest than an actual post. I’m sorry, guys. I just can’t muster up the brainpower to think of something worthwhile to say.

Cold nights, warm feet

Cats, Sleep

It’s getting to that time of year: the cold has arrived, and my cat has noticed.

We keep the apartment warm enough, but as I’m sure you know sometimes that doesn’t cut it. The cold just seeps in. Thankfully, my cat and I have developed a somewhat symbiotic relationship, in which he warms himself by my feet and my feet are warmed by him.

Sometimes, however, this cuddling becomes inconvenient. Last night, he decided to sleep between my feet, which would have been fine had I not needed to get up during the night. As with most sleeping animals that get in your way, he would not move when I came back to bed and I was stuck having to curl up in a ball to fit. (Luckily, I am able to sleep in a near-fetal position.)

I kind of wish he hadn’t gone off to stalk some imaginary creature. My feet are a little cold right now.

Early in the morning

Cats, Insomnia, Novel, Sleep, Writing

Some mornings I have to get up early for work.

And some mornings, there’s Rory.

My cat does not seem to understand the concept of allowing me to sleep past 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. Every morning, he at least attempts to get me to wake up around that time, though sometimes I can fend him off and get back to sleep for another hour or two.

Rory is a little too smart for my own good. He trained himself to play fetch…and he trained himself to wake me up early in the morning.

It’s slowly getting better. This morning, after his failed 2:30 a.m. attempt, he let me get back to sleep until 4:30. Which, on a day when I don’t have to get up until 5:30 or 6:00 a.m., is still a bit early, but it’s an improvement.

My muse had been silent for a while, but I think I may have an idea for another novel. It’s kind of contrived and probably has been done before, but I’m hoping I can execute it well and have a good story. This time, I’m going to try to put more thought into the plot and not pants it quite so much. The last couple of times I tried pantsing, the results fell rather flat. If the plot does come along, I’ll have something more to do in the mornings other than just mess around on Facebook and Twitter 😉

What is this strange beast called “Sleep”?

Health, Insomnia

Sleep. I haven’t been used to getting much of it the past, well, 10 months or more.

I had insomnia when we got our cat, Rory, and he decided that I needed to be up at ridiculous hours every day (because that’s when I was getting up when we adopted him). So I woke every day between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. with a cat kneading my throat, or licking my face, or just plain sitting on me. It became a part of my daily routine.

I got a lot of writing done in that time. And sewing, drawing, etc. The wee hours became the me hours.

Lately, however, Rory has been waking me up later and later. This morning, I got to sleep in until after 5 a.m.! It was amazing. I had forgotten what I was missing in the past year.

The downside to this development is I will have less time for creative endeavors. I’ll have to find a better time to write/draw/paint/sew/etc. now that Rory has deemed it okay for me to sleep.

Oddly enough, I find myself wondering what to do with myself in the mornings now that I don’t have hours upon hours of free time. I can’t very well start an extensive project when there’s only an hour before I have to get ready for work.

I guess decent sleep is a double-edged sword. Without it, I have time to get things done that otherwise might not get done. With it, I’m left wondering what to do with myself.