I've been keeping the kittens locked up in the nursery at night. Various experiments with napping had proven that sleeping with them was fraught with uncertainty (I thought it was proven, anyway). So I didn't want to let them out at night to play and bother and keep me awake until I had something a little heftier than my usual sleeping aids.
Last Friday I went to my doctor and got some of a new prescription sleep medication that works differently than Ambien and all the others. I don't like those, so I was waiting eagerly for this one to become available. I've been following its progress via my chemistry magazines for a while now. And, because it was brand new (it's only been on the market since early January of this year) she actually had samples of it. Good thing since it's expensive and, well, didn't actually work properly for me.
So Friday night, after I closed the door with the kittens behind it and played with Apricot exclusively for a while, I then opened the door, much to their delight, and let them out. I took my new sleep helper (the lowest dose possible as I sometimes react oddly to drugs) and went through the ritual of going to bed.
Luckily with my nap experiments I'd already mostly trained them not to play with the light-darkening curtain that hangs over my bedroom doorway, and that wasn't an issue.
They got on the bed with me, but were mostly just curled up. They weren't the restless ones. That was me.
Unfortunately it appears that this new sleep med does exactly what it's supposed to, but the part of the brain that it affects is not the part that natters at me all night and keeps me awake. So I could feel part of my brain and my body going to sleep, but not the fretting part.
I knew there was a reason I really shouldn't do this, but I didn't want to stay awake all night, and I couldn't think of the reason. So I got up, went to the kitchen, got my usual sleep meds and took those too. That's a low dose xanax and a low dose of a muscle relaxer (because the new sleep med wasn't doing much for the tightening leg muscles issue, either).
As I lay in bed waiting for those to take effect, it finally occurred to me why this was a bad idea. I'd just taken three different CNS depressants. That's "central nervous system" depressants, and that's what keeps you breathing and your heart going while you're asleep and not paying attention to them. Yeah. Oops.
I thought about fighting to stay awake and dismissed the idea. I then thought, with some mild amusement, 'well, I hope I wake up in the morning.' But as all three were very low doses, I didn't figure I was actually in too much danger. Only late the next night (as I obviously did wake up the next morning) did I realize I had actually phrased it "I hope I wake up" and I'd meant it. A year ago I wouldn't have.
But I woke up Saturday morning feeling surprisingly refreshed and cheerful, even though I was alone. Apparently 8 or so hours of me thrashing around was too much for even stubborn kittens, and they had left.
Since then, however, I've woken up with both kittens multiple times, and always Thimble. Colby's the one that gives up about fifty percent of the time. And about fifty percent of the time (not the same fifty percent) Apricot comes up and says good morning after it's obvious I've woken up.
He comes up on the bed and walks up to my head, avoiding the kitten(s), and gives me a head bump, which is his good morning greeting apparently, and I extract a hand and pet him, and then he leaves again. It's strange ... I've never had a cat do that with quite such regularity.
Thimble has pretty well determined that right by my shoulder is a good spot to be in, as I don't usually thrash above elbow level much. He hasn't had me try to smack a snooze button to my left and hit him instead, so he sleeps on either side, but mostly on the left side. My alarm clock is directly above me on the headboard, so I won't be trying to hit the snooze button and hit him accidentally in any case.
Pippin always slept on my right due to a misunderstanding about where the clock actually was. I remember that morning being sleepily confused about why the alarm was still beeping and why instead of a "click" as I hit the button on the clock, there'd been a "mrup?" and the clock had felt fuzzy. Poor guy. It only happened once, but that was enough to convince him that to my left was a dangerous place to be.
So it's a bit odd having Thimble there a lot.
Colby either sleeps on the other side from Thimble or sleeps right below Thimble, if he's there at all. If he's there when I wake up, he's very sleepy and doesn't want to get up and he makes it darn difficult to get up and face the day when he's being all sleepy cat at me.
Luckily Thimble is always ready to get up and go. But he waits politely for me and even enjoys the time I spend waking up with smartphone games before I actually get out of bed, as I often pet him and Colby while doing that.
This is in direct contrast to his naptime behavior. I don't know if Ginger (the breeder, remember) actually had them out at night to train them how to sleep with humans, or if there is just enough difference in my sleep during the night as compared to naptime to tell Thimble how to behave. It's very odd but very welcome!
With two cats on the bed during the night, I have actually slept better the last week than I have in a very long time ... since Pippin was with me. There's something about having that pressure on the bed that's comforting, even when I'm asleep and not truly aware of what happens around me.
No comments:
Post a Comment