Feline Friday Part II: The Consequences of Feline-Induced Sleep Deprivation

You surely understand the back story here: I am sleep-deprived. Lily came to live with us in June, and since then I haven't had a full night's sleep, except for the one night she she spent terrorizing my parents at their house.(OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, since we did go on vacation and stayed at a lovely hotel, where I actually did sleep for a few nights.) Anyway, in the midst of the Adjustment to Lily Period, our waterbed mattress sprung a leak and we had no bed from August until late fall. I slept wherever I could find a flat spot, sometimes in the cavity of the waterbed on a piece of 40-year old yellow foam and sometimes on the couch. But Lily still found me wherever I was and disrupted my sleep. And the older she gets, the worse I'm sleeping.

As a result of this feline-induced sleep deprivation, in the past few weeks, I've done several bone-headed things (as described by my loving DH):

1) I lost my watch. It fell off my arm never to be seen again. I'm totally compulsive about my watch (even sleep with it on), so this was a real problem. I called the grocery store daily for about a week, hoping someone had turned it in. I re-traced my steps, even dragging DH to the grocery store parking lot where I made him wait for me while I scoured the pavement with a flashlight. No watch, but I hoped that someone who needed a new watch found it in time for Christmas. (BTW, I just purchased a new one, and it lights up at night with the push of a button. This is unbelievably exciting for me. I go into the closet just to push the button and see the glow.)

2) I lost my coat. My beloved barn coat. Because of where I put our Christmas tree, I had to move all of the coats from the hall closet to the basement. The coat was not in the basement pile of coats so I became convinced that I had left it somewhere. I made a list of ten places I had gone, then I telephoned or visited every single one looking for my coat. Still cold and grieving for my coat several days later, I went back down to the basement and guess what? There it was, top coat in the pile.

3) I backed out of the garage and into the neighbor boy's car one morning. We were both backing down our driveways at precisely the same moment and...BAM! Total mortification. I can't even go out to get the paper in the morning for fear I'll have to face the family.

4) I had a little problem putting gas in my vehicle. Thinking I would be totally efficient, while my tank was filling I ran into the convenience store to buy milk. When I came out, the tank was done filling: 12 gallons, $26. I hadn't pushed the "receipt" button, so I closed up the tank and drove away, feeling rather smug about my multi-tasking. Later that day, I noticed I still had no gas in my car. I had failed to squeeze the nozzle.

5) I broke my glasses. One night when I was comatose on the couch, Lily mounted the Christmas tree and it began swaying side to side. "Get that "wonderful" cat out of the tree!" yelled DH, so I scrambled out of my sleeping position and immediately felt a crunch under my knee. I'd forgotten that my glasses had been perched precariously on the side of the couch. I felt very badly about this. Until Lily, I had never broken a pair of glasses.

6) I had a little problem with my driver's license. Earlier this year, DH let his license expire and had to take the test. Fearful that would happen to me and I'd never drive again, I put 60 days of reminders on our Outlook calendar before and after my birthday. Last week I decided I'd take care of this little task. I fixed my hair so that it would look good in the photo for the next 5 years, put on my least-embarrassing turtleneck and drove across town to the DOT. I waited in line 20 minutes, filled out all of the paperwork, considered organ donation, then went to the counter when my number was called and presented my paperwork to the nice DOT guy.

DOT guy: "Uh, lady, you do realize you've got another year before your license expires."
Me: "Uh, actually, no."
DOT guy smiles politely, his eyes wide, obviously thinking I'm some sort of ding-dong. Or maybe he was just noticing the cat hair on my turtleneck.
Me, trying to salvage the situation: "Well, then, would there be any advantage of my just going ahead and renewing it now, one year early?"
DOT Guy: "Uh, no, unless you're planning to move out of state."
Me, under breath: "Maybe that would be a good idea."

The consequences of typical, garden-variety sleep-deprivation are well-documented. But I don't know if anyone has studied sleep-deprivation in kitten owners. Based on the list of stupid things I've done in the past few weeks, I think I'd make a purr-fect subject for some sort of study. Don't you?