Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Should Your Cat Sleep in Your Bed?
You do not decide whether the cat sleeps in the bed. You decide whether to be awake when it happens. — YNOT!
A woman in a cat owners’ group asked the most innocent question in the world, and three thousand three hundred people showed up to answer it. That tells you something about the question.
Her kitten was four months old. For his first month in the house he had slept in a bathroom-and-hallway arrangement — food, water, litter box, bed, everything correct and proper, a little studio apartment for a tenant the size of a shoe. Then one night she let him sleep in her bed.
He did great. Slept the whole night. Woke her at six, same as always, polite as a concierge. Curled up beside her like, in her words, the good little boy he is.
Her question: “Did I start something I won’t be able to undo? Where does your kitty sleep???”
Friend. Let me save you some suspense. Yes, you started something. No, you will not be able to undo it. And the three thousand answers she got all said the same thing in three thousand different ways: welcome to the arrangement.
THE FIRST NIGHT IS NOT A SLEEPOVER. IT IS A TREATY SIGNING.
People think the first night is a trial. The cat knows better. The cat understands the law the way a river understands a crack in a dam: whatever happens once, with permission, is precedent, and precedent is forever.
This is not stubbornness; it is jurisprudence. In cat law, a thing done once is a thing that may be done, and a thing done twice is a right, and rights are defended at all costs, usually from the middle of your pillow at the hour of deepest sleep. You did not let the kitten try the bed. You ratified the bed. The kitten has since informed the relevant authorities, and the relevant authority is the kitten.
Understand this and you understand everything that follows: you are not deciding whether the cat sleeps in the bed. You are negotiating the terms under which the cat sleeps in the bed. There is a difference, and the difference is your whole dignity as head of household, such as it is.
THE HONEST LEDGER: WHAT YOU GAIN
Let us be fair before we be funny. There are real profits here.
Warmth. A cat is a small, self-regulating furnace that runs at about a hundred and two degrees and seeks out the coldest human in the bed with the instincts of a bloodhound. Couples have been known to negotiate custody of the cat in winter like it was property, which, legally speaking, it is not. The cat is the landlord.
The bond. A kitten who sleeps against you learns your smell, your sounds, your entirely unremarkable breathing, and files all of it under home. The cat who sleeps with you as a kitten is the cat who looks for you in every room for twenty years. That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.
The alarm-clock service. That kitten woke his human at six, same as always, and she thought that was the kitten being good. It is better than good — it is reliable, and it cannot be snoozed, only fed. A cat alarm does not run out of batteries. It runs out of patience, which is louder.
And the purr. Scientists can argue about frequencies and healing all they like. A person who has fallen asleep with a hand on a purring cat does not need the study. Some of the best sleep of your life will have a cat in it. I have kept the records. They are extensive.
THE OTHER LEDGER: WHAT IT COSTS
Now the expenses, because a treaty should be read before it is framed.
The 3 a.m. NASCAR. Cats are crepuscular, which is a Latin way of saying their finest hours are dawn and dusk and, through some clerical error, the middle of your night. Some nights the bed becomes a racetrack and you become the infield. A kitten at full sprint weighs nothing. A grown cat at full sprint, landing from altitude onto a sleeping man’s stomach, weighs — according to the man — roughly a piano.
The pillow annexation. It proceeds by inches and by right. First the corner. Then a paw’s worth. Then the cat is on the pillow and you are on the other pillow, and then, in time, you are on the idea of a pillow while the cat occupies the county. Nobody signs this treaty either. It just accretes, like interest, like empire.
Allergies and light sleep. If dander troubles you, the bedroom is the worst battlefield to surrender, and there is no shame in holding that line — a cat can be loved enormously from a cat bed beside yours. Light sleepers should also think twice, not because the arrangement is bad but because it is permanent. See: jurisprudence, above.
THE TERMS OF SURRENDER
Since the bed is ratified, negotiate like a professional.
Give the cat real estate of its own. A soft blanket, folded, at the foot of the bed — the cat’s own parcel. Most cats will take the deed seriously, because what they wanted all along was not your pillow; it was inclusion, with options. The pillow incursions will still occur, but as diplomacy, not invasion.
Run the batteries down before lights-out. Ten or fifteen minutes of serious play in the evening — the wand toy, the great hunt, the final pounce — followed by a small meal. Hunt, catch, eat, groom, sleep: it is the oldest program a cat runs, and a human who schedules it gets a cat whose wild hour lands at nine in the evening instead of three in the morning.
Answer the dawn patrol with boredom. The six o’clock wake-up is a negotiation too. Feed on your schedule, not on demand’s schedule, and keep the pre-breakfast theater dull — no play, no conversation, no entertainment. A cat who learns that dawn produces only a yawn will move dawn to a more reasonable hour. Slowly. Cats bill by the month.
Keep one inviolable rule. Whatever your line is — no faces at night, no walking on the sleeper’s head — hold it always, kindly and without exception. Cats respect consistency the way they respect closed doors: not at all, but they learn where the door is.
THE VERDICT OF THREE THOUSAND WITNESSES
That lady asked if she had started something she could not undo, and I have read the testimony of the crowd, and the crowd was not warning her. They were welcoming her. Story after story of cats in beds for five years, ten years, nineteen years — and not one witness asking for their pillow back.
Here is the truth under the joke: nobody who has shared a bed with a cat goes back by choice. The bed gets smaller and the sleep gets better and those two facts refuse to make sense together until you have lived them, and then they refuse to make sense any other way.
The kitten slept through the night and woke her at six and curled up like the good little boy he is. That was not a trial run, ma’am. That was the first night of the rest of the arrangement — and if the testimony of three thousand households means anything, it is the best furniture decision you will ever not make.
A cat in the bed takes up a foot of space and all of the room, and somehow the bed is warmer for both of those facts. — YNOT!
