Sleep shifts

Kittens are, as everyone knows, insane. Which means that my nights and mornings have gotten all jumbled these past few weeks as the critters and I have tried to hammer out a sleep schedule that accommodates my work schedule and their instincts to get up at the ass crack of dawn and stampede around the apartment, ripping things off the walls.

Mother Nature never compromises, so usually here’s what happens when I get off work at midnightish:

I come home to a smelly apartment, with two kitties lounging sleepily on a random surface. I proceed to unwind (this often involves pouring a glass of wine and getting on the computer). The cats take this as their cue to make up for all that playing they didn’t do while I was at work. So they begin stampeding in circles around the apartment, bouncing off walls and plunging from tables and scaling chairs and attacking cords and growling menacingly at one another. I try to tire them out using feather toys and laser pointers. They ignore my feeble attempts at play and attack the DSL modem. Loudly. I imagine my downstairs neighbors aiming a shotgun at the ceiling and deciding, after much prayer, to let me live.

At two or three, I turn off all the lights and put Felix back in the cage. The cats are usually still wrestling. Loudly. But sometimes turning off all the lights will settle them down. I prepare for bed and wince was they knock things off the coffee table. I hear someone step in the water bowl. The smell of fresh cat poop wafts into the bathroom as I brush my teeth. I try not to gag.

I get into bed. Sometimes I leave a lamp on so I can read, other times I’m ready to pass out. The kitties climb — no, more like lurch — into bed with me and stare at me, as if to say, We’re just getting started, loser! Jack sits on the pillow to my right, watching Sally as the stalks my feet under the covers. Any time I move, they pounce. I lie perfectly still. Sally sees me blink and punches my eyeball.

Somehow I manage to fall asleep with them staring at me. If I’m lucky. Other times they will simply conduct the rest of their play time on top of me or attack the newspaper in the corner — the newspaper Felix uses to do his bidness. Those nights I shut them out of the bedroom and hope they don’t sprout thumbs with which to open the door.

Some mornings I can sleep ’til 10 or whenever I’d like, and I’ll get up and open the doors and see them sitting quietly on the couch. Other mornings, like this morning at 6, I will feel something furry graze my arm and realize that they somehow made their way into the bedroom. And I’ll let them stay as long as they can behave, because, really, it’s so sweet being awaken by a cute little kitty. So, as this morning, I’ll lie there as Sally finds the crook in my neck or my elbow and cuddles up to me, purring. I’ll lose my breath as she lets a stinkbomb right in my face. Twice. I’ll fan the air frantically, trying to get some non-tainted oxygen. She will see my rapid movement as a signal that it’s time to play.

And then three seconds later there’s a stampede and I’m up and blogging at 6:30 a.m.

And now it’s time to go back to bed. If it’s possible.