Tuesday, July 03, 2007

I Am Getting Old – Part Twenty

I am getting old because ….I am taking naps in the middle of the afternoon and I have not done that since I was a young child, so it must be getting older that is causing this. My sleep habits have always been horrible. I would go to bed late at night and wake up very early in the morning. In the past few years, I go to bed early and still wake up early. I fall asleep very quickly and thought that was a good thing but I saw a program on sleep disorders and learned that the quicker you fall asleep, the more sleep deprived you are. Imagine that. I would wake up three or four times each night so maybe I was sleep deprived

My cat Morris caused part of my waking up. For some reason starting at 3AM, he meows, very pitiful I might add, until someone gets up to feed him. Nothing would make him stop. Not even a spray bottle of water (he loves to play in the water running from the faucet). I solved this problem by moving his litter box, food, and water to the den and at night, I shut the den door. This is a better solution than a “crate” to keep him in at night (recommended by the vet). You might ask why not just close the bedroom door. Well, Morris has this thing about doors that are closed. He will “paw” at them and then jump against them until the door is opened to stop the noise.

Morris is an unusual cat. I adopted him in 1995 at the age of 6 months. He has always done strange things. I could not leave an ashtray out at night because he would take the cigarette butts and put them under the rug in the kitchen in a straight line about an inch apart. I had glass candles on the coffee table and he would take the wicks out and hide them. One time I bought dried flowers for an arrangement that included pieces of wheat. The next day when I came home from work, he had taken all those pieces of wheat out of the arrangement and put them at different places around the apartment. I filled a glass vase with marbles and he had to try to take them out of the vase. These are just a few of the “tricks” he would do. I would never considered giving him up. He comes when he is called and gets in my lap on the love seat and purrs and is so loving. I just consider him a very smart cat, not a bother. He is like my little “child".

By the way, since moving Morris to the den at night, I do not wake up during the night but still am napping in the middle of the afternoon, so I am still on a quest to find the reason for that.