Category: cat behavior

Newsweek has a new interview with a veterinarian who warns that allowing your cats on your bed could be bad for sleep, but admits her own miniature pride rules the bed and often crowds her halfway off the mattress.

The main takeaway is that allowing your feline overlords on your bed can have positives and negatives, but good luck trying to do anything about it.

Of course no one quoted in the story says that outright, but the solutions they offer are limited to getting an air filter, washing your sheets more often, trying to train your cat to stay in one spot on the bed (lol), and keeping kittens off the bed from the very beginning, which is a diplomatic way of admitting if your cat is an adult, you’ve got no say in the matter.

I’ve often said that when I brought Buddy home I was prepared for a skittish cat who might dive under the bed and not emerge for days or weeks except to eat. That’s what many of the guides for first-time kitten adopters said, anyway.

But Bud defied expectations and came striding out of his carrier like a furry little Genghis Khan who just started conquering shit.

“Ooh, nice chair. Mine! I like this desk, this’ll make a nice napping spot. Mine! What’s this? You sleep here? Not anymore. Mine! Well, okay, you can sleep here too I guess…”

I realized immediately I was not going to be able to keep him off the bed, and I was already feeling awful that I’d just taken him from his mom and brought him to a strange new place, so there was no chance I was going to lock him out of my bedroom even if he did wage a nightly war on my feet and ricochet around the bedroom, gleefully cackling in the dark after successfully startling me out of sleep.

It’s fair to say I wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into in those first few weeks, especially when he began coming up with more diabolic ways of torturing me. Those torture methods culminated with The High Jump, in which Bud climbed to the highest possible perch in my bedroom, then leaped in a kamikaze attack, landing square on my stomach so I was violently torn from my dreams and folded up like a suitcase all at once.

I remember my heart pounding as my little lunatic kitten vanished back into the shadows, trilling with delight and waiting for my breathing to slow again before launching another attack.

It went like that for weeks, maybe more, and I lost a lot of sleep but eventually his schedule synced with mine, I learned to tire him out with late night play time, and our nights became peaceful. Buddy began draping himself over me or burrowing into my side, which he still does all these years later.

If the sole measurement is quality of sleep, who can say what the final balance is? How do you measure the penalty of perhaps waking up more frequently, but falling asleep faster? Can you quantify the benefit of falling asleep to the soothing buzz of a cat purring next to you?

YMMV, but for me Bud is a calming presence. Or has been, since he stopped finding it amusing to attack me all night. There’s also a final benefit that has nothing to do with sleep quality: Letting your feline friend snooze with you helps strengthen your bond, and solidifies their status as a true member of the family.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Bud wants to nap and needs his human mattress…