I have two cats. I have already mentioned one. My dear Oh-So-Easy-To-Scare cat. The other one is quite the opposite. She doesn’t scare easily, and tackles new challenges with the ease and composure that is so typical for cats. Let’s call her my I’m-On-Top-Of-The-World cat. They are both females. Not that I’m such an expert, but their “areas” match the discriptions of female “areas”, and I’m sure the vet would have told me if they were males when they both were operatet…

Cat
A small carnivorous mammal (Felis catus or F. domesticus) domesticated since early times as a catcher of rats and mice and as a pet and existing in several distinctive breeds and varieties.
- Dictionary.com

Here is a presentation of my two sweethearts, and how they came to be a part of my life.

My I’m-On-Top-Of-The-World cat

This was my first cat. Well, not really my first, but the other two were family cats. This one is the first I got after I moved away from home. She’s a mix between a race I believe is called Holy Birma and some tomcat from the neighbourhood. She has a lot of attitude, and talks a lot. Unfortunately I don’t understand half of it, although I wish I could. The biggest problem I had with her was her lack of control of her claws. I still have the scars in my thighs from those days (and weeks). For the first few weeks, before I got my second cat, she would always sleep right next to my head at night. I never had any trouble getting enough sleep. This changed drastically when cat no. 2 came…

My Oh-So-Easy-To-Scare cat

This one I picked up about 3 weeks after the first one. She lived in a shed with her brother (the previous owners said that that one was a female aswell, but I think the lump between “her” legs say otherwise), and had not spent much time inside a house with people around her all the time before. The result was that she lay stiff as a board, preferably in the window frame, and wouldn’t eat, drink or even do the necessary you-know-what in the litter box unless I was in bed. After a couple of days she started relaxing a bit. Until the phone rang (that doesn’t happen very often) and she ran and hid under the kitchen counter. I don’t have a proper stove, so there’s a hole that’s not supposed to be there. So there she lay for a couple of days, only coming out after I’d gone to bed to eat and drink and do you-know-what. Needless to say I was getting kinda desperate at this time, contemplating wether I should send her back where she came from. I really thought she’d be better of there. But the second day I got help, and finally she was out (and the opening securely sealed). During this time I had taken the advise from a lot of people, and let my grand parents take the other cat, so that the new cat would get used to being here. But now I was desperate to get my little darling back home, so I went and got her. And what a change. Finally the newbie came forward and took some initiative. The “old” cat wasn’t to happy, hissing at the newcomer, but after a couple of days of the newbie trying to “court” the reluctant oldie they are now the best of friends.

So what has this to do with sleep? You see, the two little rascals started playing at night. Laudly. Running from one end of the appartment to the other. And then back again. A lot. I didn’t really know how much this affected me until i started getting dizzy. And i din’t even realize what caused my dizziness the first couple of days. Until the first day at work… That’s when it hit me. That night was the first night I didn’t let them roam the appartment as they wished. I’m sure their period in “lock up” wasn’t no. 1 on their Things-I-Want-To-Do-list, but the next time I let them go free during the night, less than a week later, they actually behaved somewhat decent. And I got my sleep AND company in bed. Yay!