Dear Sparkle: My Human Is Taking Up the Whole Bed!

Dear Sparkle,

My human says I am a little cranky, but who can blame me? I am not getting enough sleep! That makes anybody cranky, human or feline. And you wanna know why I am not getting enough sleep? Yep, it’s all on my human! She takes up the whole bed at night. She is always moving and thrashing around in her sleep and half the time I’m worried I’ll get thrown off the bed from all her flailing! You know what’s even worse? She says I’m the one taking up the whole bed! That’s a laugh — I’m probably one tenth her size, and you don’t need to be a scientist to figure out the ratio of mass to bed puts the blame squarely on her. Is there any way to get her to settle down? I’ve tried lying on top of her, but at 15 pounds, I can only do so much to keep her still — and that “so much” generally means “not much.”

Signed,

Sleep Deprived

Dear Sleep Deprived,

You have no idea how often I hear this complaint, from both humans and cats. And yes, it is always the humans to blame. They refuse to acknowledge that with their bigger mass, they are taking up more bed space than we kitties possibly could. But to listen to them, you would think we had the magical ability to morph into spreading, hyper-limbed creatures, capable of covering a whole bed in one simple stretch. I wish! Bottom line, humans are just being silly and letting their imaginations run away with them. Throughout the ages, kitties have tried any number of solutions: lying on their human (we don’t weigh enough to keep them still for long), biting and growing at them when accidentally whapped with a random limb (it only causes the human to wake up screaming – which keeps us awake even longer), and just toughing it out (and all that does is frustrate us). Now, the most logical solution would be to get a bigger bed, but for some reason, humans never come up with this idea. Granted, sometimes, the room is too small to accommodate a larger bed, but you would think that having more room for both them and you to spread out would appeal to them. But they stubbornly cling to their smaller mattresses. If you want to get all your beauty rest in, the best suggestion I can give is to sleep on the bed when your human is not there to disturb you. Fortunately, humans sleep a lot fewer hours than us kitties, so this is pretty easy to do. Of course, this means that you will likely be up most of the night, running around and getting in your daily activities — and keeping your human from getting a good night’s rest. But that’s what she gets for not coming up with a more satisfactory solution for you.
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