The Cat Who Cried “MWAOWWWaaaOIIOOW!”

The blood-curdling howl ripped me from dream state, and I awoke knowing someone was doing something horrible to something else out there in the night.  Then it all snapped into place like two Legos and my feet flew out of bed bringing me along running with them.  It was five AM and I had to stop the painful sounds of torture — if not any actual torture itself.  I had to consider, what would the neighbors think?

Sure enough, I had awoken to the horrible sounds of another battle-supreme between the two cats who otherwise can’t get enough (sleep on top) of each other.  The “brothers” who are not related, the boys who fill our days with joys have lately become a troubled duo.  Call them Paul and John, they ain’t getting along, at least not all the time like they used to.

As a result of this recent conflict, Brody has developed a cat scream so ludicrously pained and tortured that you are sure he’s being subjected to the kitty equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition or similarly perverse torment event.  But instead of on the rack, I always find him after one of his cacophonous battle screeches locked in a mere stalemate with Panther, and I wonder: how much of my work in the performing arts have really effected my cats?  Is he really getting hurt or is he acting the drama kitty queen to send us running?  Or, possibly, have my interludes into aria singing led to the beginning of a new art form altogether — the cat opera!?

Well, it all has me and Hank singing the battling-cat blues, and wondering what to do with a spoiled little fat cat named Panther who has turned into a raging bitch over his new need-to-slim-down-or-get-sick diet.  Damn cat doesn’t know a pecking order if it came and nailed him on the nose, which it has, ala Brody, more than once.  Panther is a good case for kitty prozac, possibly, but first we’re gonna try every holistic approach we can find.  The problem is serious, and humor only helps so much.

So, we’re going to seek some professional help with all the loads of cash we have lying around over here, what with the economy being so good. In the meantime, I found this list of “holistic approaches” to cat aggression.  I’m going to try some of them, although holding a magnet to Panther’s head for 20 minutes a day also seems fairly extreme as far as home remedies are concerned.

Sleeping with The Panther

Since last winter, Herman Panther has taken to sleeping in Hank’s arms like a lover.  Now, I don’t want you to think that I mind, because I don’t mind at all.  Seeing as how I tend to be mistaken in my sleep for a mild cyclone, I’m perfectly happy letting two of my boys have at the comfort of each other’s arms. That way I’m free to twist the sheets into rope and send the blankets into 14 directions and generally get the sleep that I need unencumbered. 

Unfortunately, my spot on the door-side of the bed puts me directly in the path of the sleek but leaden-weighted Herman Panther, a place that seems predetermined to be his springboard on and off the bed. 

Imagine me, deep in sleep, in my stormy lullaby-land, unconscious, unknowing, unable to anticipate my 16-pound bowling ball on claws bounding off my belly like it’s the trampoline launch at the cat gymnast olympics.  Or equally astonishing, awakening to the scrabbling ascent over my protruding hip at he claws his way up, over, and into the valley between me and Hank.

Let’s just say I could do without these sudden awakenings. But there is little that can be done, short of building a fence on my side of the bed, which is an idea I just now had that might work.  But short of that, his only other route is to cut across my pillow, painfully yanking my hair with each step. Or sometimes, he’s cut across my face, and I awaken with scratched cheeks.  Yes, I don’t mind Panther sleeping with Hank, it’s just his getting in and out of bed that causes issues.

However, once he makes it to his target, let’s call it ”warm-body Hank,” a bit of magic occurs that kind of changes everything.  This is how it works:  Herman mills around in the vicinity of Hank’s neck looking especially clueless and waiting for “it” to happen.  Then, suddenly, he’s drawn in under the covers right in the perfect spot next to warm-body Hank.  It happens so fast, it’s amazing!  It would take the cat about a year to find that spot himself, believe me.

Now Herman’s sleeping head rests on Hank’s big manly bicep, and Hank’s other arm gently embraces the happy black cat.   Through the night they sleep thus, man and cat and other cat (at feet), and woman slash cyclone slash trampoline.  Now, what was it I was complaining about?

Cats at Night: Bleary Humans Seek Answers Here

I don’t want you to think this is 1984 or anything, but I do get to see the search terms that some of you use to arrive at Self Help for Cats.  By far and wide the number one topic you all want to know about is what to do when your cats go crazy at night. 

Apparently Self Help for Cats has uncovered an epidemic wherein everyday, cat people around the planet wake up and blearily start searching the Internet with terms like, “cat night crazies,” “cat freaks out at night,” and my favorite, just searched on yesterday: “cat ruining house at night.”

Now I sure don’t mind the traffic, because frankly right now Self Help for Cats is still a boutique operation minus the boutique, for sure.  And I’m honored to be sought as a source of help and advice. What I need to clarify, however, is that the Self Help for Cats program is not really about helping you get a good night sleep — that will merely be one of the fantastic, amazing side effects of the Self Help for Cats plan, along with things like health, wealth, and eternal bliss.   

So don’t expect a lot of practical, boring, labor-intensive remedies that you will find on other sites.  Wake them at this time, feed them at that — I’m sure it’s all well and good, and I even provide a link to such an earnest and thought-out program in my own first piece here on the topic.  

But understand, Self Help for Cats is not about how to put kitty to bed on your schedule.  Rather, the entire Self Help for Cats program is about corralling that wild, innate entrepreneurial energy you see running itself rampant about 1 am, and using it to shake up the world and create something totally new and utterly great!

Of course, once you cat is a major success, he or she is no longer going to want to bug you all night long, it almost goes without saying. 

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Tune in soon for our next feature on this topic: The Mattress:  Invented by Cat to Torment Man?  Our hard hitting reporter will examine whether humans used to sleep on their feet like horses until cats trained them to lie horizontally, and be completely at their mercy for eight hours a day.

Cats Gone Night Crazy? Coping with the PM Feline Freak-Out

So we bring cat in from the wild and expect it to act all sophisticated and keep a decent sleep schedule like a normal person. Next thing you know, cat needs to be checked into a padded room at the stroke of midnight. If your cat transforms from love angel to whack devil about the time you want to go to bed, don’t start Googling feline funny farms. Probably the one who needs a metaphoric lobotomy in the situation is you, the human.

Yes, it’s quite a problem that our little furries with the sharp claws happen to be nocturnal by nature. In recent decades, as cats have made the big move from the barn to the bedroom, lots of people have discovered their sleep disturbed in one way or another by the nightly “kitty crazies.”

My own worst story was waking up one early hour to feel my adorable and wild-ish Maine Coon chomping deeply into the connecting tissue of my small right toe. Now if you’ve never awoken to the bite of an animal, well, it’s like being chased by a swarm of bees or confronting a mama Grizzly or having to escape from a fire – it’s one of those things that’s always best when it happens to someone else.

The Truth About Cats & Sleep

Cats get a lot of crap for the phenomenal amount of down-time they take, and I admit to being one to make fun of their marathon knock-out naps. Yet it turns out the joke is on me because science has known for years that cats actually accomplish stuff as they sleep!

That’s right, cats may look like they are lost in LaLa land, but actually they are getting to the REM time that will fine tune them into tip-top form and function. Their half-life in dreamland lets them practice their moves on an ideal basis, turning them into the hunting machine they would need to be, if they needed to hunt.

It’s all reported in The Mind at Night by Andrea Rock. Not that I approve of this kind of research, seeing as French neurobiologist Michel Jouvet “surgically disconnected the portion of the cat’s brain that normally paralyzes its muscles during REM.” Still, it’s fascinating to know that cat dreams are a form of practice for the demands of the real world. One can only hope they reconnected that part of the brain later so the cats could go back to dreaming in peace, even if was 1960.

Clear from this stunning discovery, cats are not born enemies of time management – they simply practice it on a level that humans are only just starting to understand.