So I said to Tom last night, “When we move into the new house, we should lock the cats out of our room so we can sleep better.” I mean, I love nothing better than seeing a cat curled up on our bed, but at night…well, they walk on you and wake you up (those little kitty feet, although small, can really hurt), they start crying and nudging you at 6:30am (weekday or not), and they often fight and/or play with each other at the most inopportune times. And the previous night, I had been rudely awakened by a kitten actually jumping on the bed and landing square on my back—not how you really want to be woken up. So I wanted to try locking them out at the new house—figuring a new place, a new routine. Well, Tom suggested we just try it right then. So we did. (Well, we left Fuzzy in because he was under the bed and he’s usually good for the whole night.) I didn’t have high hopes, because we’d tried it before a few times and they always (ALWAYS) end up crying in the middle of the night. It wakes me up but Tom generally sleeps through it, so he thinks it was successful… But I was game to give it another try.
As always, the first few hours went fine…and then in the middle of the night, you start to hear the whining. And the crying. And then you hear the door handle jiggling (seriously) so you know someone is up on their hind feet trying to get in. AND THEN (and this is the most hilarious of all), you hear them actually running headlong into (INTO!) the door. By this time, Tom and I are both (yes, BOTH!) awake and laughing at our stupid cats trying to get into our room by butting their heads into the door. It’s 2am. So we try to ignore it (very hard for me) and then we hear the ultimate in can’t-sleep-through-it noise: Fuzzy getting ready to puke. If you’ve heard it, it’s UNMISTAKABLE. And then we hear him actually hack something up. Well, now we’ve GOT to get up to find it and clean it so we don’t step in it (having forgotten about it by morning). Well, this means we have to open our door and now, yep, the kittens rush in and Fuzzy rushes out. The kittens curled up on the bed, totally content, and fell right asleep. Tom and I laid awake for probably an hour. After finally falling asleep, Charlie—right on schedule at 6:30am—starts crying and nudging me. ARGH! About that time, Tom got up and chased the cats out so I could sleep in peace awhile longer.
Like I said…new house, new routine. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.