My Cat and Me

I moved my cat across an ocean. Unfortunately, she is finally getting comfortable with it. This means that cat is back to her usual routines.

To my cat, the day is for sleeping. The warning bells should have gone off, sleep during the day equals play at night. My bells did not ring loud enough for me to wake her up so I had to suffer the consequences. When I need to sleep, she is ready to play.

The other issue is that she is adjusting to a new home and new people. The sounds and movement of several people in a large, new space freak her out. In my room, she is comfortable. It is smaller, full of my smell, and usually only the familiar presence of me occupies it. Her normal personality comes out in this space.

This morning, the combination of daytime sleeping, comfort in her new space, and usual routines came together in a bad way. At 5 am, she was up. I know this because she woke me up. It is hard to sleep with a cat running over your body, repeatedly. She was making spastic laps around my room. Attack dirty laundry, check out the window, try to claw a suitcase, get yelled at, up on the bedside table, run over me, attack lumps in the comforter that move, off the bed, and back to the dirty laundry. It was great circuit training for her and bad sleep for me.

Finally, I kicked her out and got some sleep. Her timeout worked and she returned and was ready to sleep, just as I needed to get up. I hope I can break her of this routine.