sleep – Deep Dark Thoughts

It’s Cat O’Clock

I don’t wake up in the morning to an alarm clock anymore. I wake up to a cat.

Sometimes it’s just one cat, but sometimes it’s as many as all three. They all decide they want to fight, chase each other, and bang into the walls at about seven o’clock each morning. I wake up to the sound of growling, and little claws trying to find purchase on the hardwood floor as the cats run as fast as they can down the hallway until they slam into the bathroom door at the far end.

This skittering and scratching is often followed by loud crashes as the cats take their disagreement up onto the bathroom counter. Hairdryers, toothbrushes, and makeup bottles all get tossed to the floor during the tumult, and I find myself lying awake in bed and wondering why I haven’t already relegated those hairy alarm clocks to the great outdoors.

They can run around all they like out in the yard without disturbing my slumber.

It doesn’t really seem fair to me that an animal that sleeps 23 hours every day is responsible for keeping me awake so frequently. The only time they seem to move is when they get up to eat, or when they decide to chase and wrestle with one another. And the wrestling always seems to coincide with me trying to go to sleep at night or early in the morning about an hour before my alarm clock is about to go off.

It’s like they plan it that way.

Can cats tell time?

During the day, when I am already awake, I can always find the cats in the exact same place: Willow and Scout generally sleep under the bed, or in the living room cat tree, and Sukoshi is curled up on the couch’s ottoman. If I pick one of them up or pet them, they open their eyes and glare at me like they haven’t just been asleep for the last twelve hours straight. It seems a bit hypocritical to me. That’s all I’m saying.

If I move them, they immediately return to whatever spot they had been occupying and go back to sleep. It’s like trying to rouse a coma patient. On the bright side, picking them up is extremely easy since they hang in my arms motionless like some kind of sand-filled pillow as I carry them around. It must be a sort of superpower that allows a cat to sleep so much even when everyone else in the house is up and moving around.

For the most part, I just leave the cats alone when they’re sleeping. Unless, of course, Willow (the fat one) has curled up on the couch in the spot where I like to sit. Then I have to shove the furry lump of dough aside to make room for myself. This is usually when I get one eye open, a brief meow of annoyance, and maybe a quick grooming of mussed fur to demonstrate her dislike of having been touched. Within a few seconds, she is back asleep with her tongue still out of her mouth and a string of drool trailing from her chin to the couch cushion.

Then, when the sun sets, something magical (or demonic) happens. My wife and I crawl into bed and say goodnight, and the cats are suddenly possessed of more internal energy than they know what to do with. One cat will jump onto the bed and attack my feet under the covers, another leaps onto the dresser and decides to push everything there to the floor. The third cat (usually Sukoshi) will wait patiently in the bathroom until one of her partners gets tired and decides to tag her into the ring. That’s when Sukoshi springs to action, vaulting into the litter box and attempting to toss every last bit of litter from the box onto the bathroom floor.

If I get out of bed to yell at them, they all race from the bedroom into the kitchen. This is followed by several bangs and yowls as they knock over the garbage can or try to clear the kitchen counters of whatever pots and pans are still in the drying rack.

When playtime is over, they all slink back into the bedroom and crawl under the bed to catch a few hours of sleep and rest up for the following morning’s activities. This is about the time I can finally fall asleep.

The following day, they sneak out from beneath the bed and plan their morning chaos. I’m not sure if one cat is tasked with watching the clock and waking the others at the assigned time, or if they simply have an innate sense of the best time to startle me awake to guarantee I will be groggy and in a foul mood the rest of the morning, but about an hour before my alarm normally goes off, they are on the prowl again.

Willow and Scout run circles in the bedroom that include constant laps across the top of the bed and over my head. They occasionally pause to claw at the carpet or jump on top of each other. Sukoshi bolts for the litter box to remove all the sand that I had to replace the night before.

When I finally give up trying to sleep and crawl out of bed, all three cats will look at me, yawn, then decide that it really is too early to be up. They make their morning migration to the living room to curl up and snooze the day away.

Resting up for their fifteen minutes of crazy later that night.

It apparently takes a lot of energy to empty a litter box.

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An Anxious Night

I don’t typically sleep well at night. It’s been this way for years. Between insomnia, kids up late watching the television too loud, trips to the bathroom, and the occasional panic attack, sleeping through the night has become a rare occurrence.

So, it was doubly disturbing the other night when I was awakened in the small hours of the morning by the sound of my wife’s voice. I had been fast asleep, deep into a lovely dream, and enjoying several hours of restful sleep strung all in a row.

As I swam toward wakefulness, I heard her repeat, “What? What is it?”

I turned toward her, thinking she was talking in her sleep and wondering if I could fix the problem with a well-placed pillow and a length of rope. Then I heard another voice in the hallway outside our bedroom. It was our daughter, EM2. She was complaining that her chest hurt, and she could not sleep.

Knowing that EM2 was in the middle of her finals week at college, and that she had spent a rather stressful weekend writing papers and studying for her upcoming tests, I told her she was most likely experiencing some anxiety, and that she should take some antacids to settle her stomach and try to go back to sleep.

She agreed and left.

I turned back to my pillow, who waited faithfully for my return. I was asleep again in moments. I recall dreaming of an idyllic forest, with a small stream running through it, and a deer drinking from the flowing water. The deer raised its head and looked at me. It opened its mouth, and said, “Hey, Dad. Are you still awake?”

Groggily I opened my eyes and found EM2 standing beside my bed, staring down at me.

“What?” I asked. Perhaps with more emphasis than absolutely necessary.

“My chest still hurts. Are you sure its not a heart attack? I think I need to go to the hospital.”

EM2 is twenty-one years old and, while heart attacks do happen, they are extremely rare at her age. Plus, I have suffered from anxiety and stress for many years, and I know the symptoms when I see them from personal experience. Still, to be cautious, I told her to call the on-call advice nurse at the hospital and see what they had to say. If they wanted her to come to the emergency room, I would drive her.

I figured the nurse would realize right away that they were talking to a stressed-out kid who was NOT having a heart attack. They would tell EM2 to relax and try to go back to bed. I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

Ten minutes later, I was in my truck, still not fully awake, driving my daughter to the emergency room.

We arrived, and hospital staff brought EM2 to one of the examination rooms right away. For the next ninety minutes, I sat in the hallway watching medical staff in comfy blue pajamas wandering the premises while EM2 had her blood pressure checked, blood drawn, and an EKG performed to check for irregular heart rhythm.

All tests were negative.

The doctor’s determination? She was suffering from anxiety.

If only someone else had recognized the signs early on. This whole trip might have been avoidable.

Before EM2 was released from the hospital, the nurse handed her two written prescriptions. He said one was for a steroid, and the other was an antibiotic. EM2 asked if she needed to take them, and the nurse explained that yes, the doctor wanted her to take the medications.

I honestly wasn’t certain why a 21-year-old needs steroids and antibiotics after an anxiety attack, but what do I know? The doctor wanted her to take them. And doctors are trained professionals. They take two or three extra weeks of schooling just so they can get their doctor’s permit, or medical ribbon, or whatever the hell it is they get that says they know what they’re doing.

Next stop, hospital pharmacy.

EM2 handed the pharmacist her prescriptions and then was told she did not have insurance through the hospital and would need to go to another pharmacy to get it filled.

Hold on a minute. My daughter is a Kaiser member. We went to a Kaiser hospital to get treated. She received a Kaiser prescription, written by a Kaiser doctor on a pad of paper that said “Kaiser” at the top, with a ballpoint pen that said “Kaiser” on the side of it.

And the medications weren’t covered?

The pharmacist said EM2 would need to go to a Walgreen’s to fill the prescriptions, but that they would be covered and wouldn’t require a co-pay if we did. Otherwise, if we got the medications at the hospital, they would cost us full price. Completely confused but having no other recourse but to go find a Walgreen’s to fill her prescriptions, we left.

A few minutes later, during the drive to find a Walgreen’s somewhere in our vicinity, EM2 received a phone call from the hospital. The nurse told her that the prescriptions she had received had been a mistake and that they were intended for someone else. At least now the mystery of why her insurance wouldn’t cover the cost was solved. It wasn’t her medication. EM2 was advised to take some Motrin if she was still not feeling well, but otherwise there was no follow up treatment, and she was free to go home.

I made a U-turn at the next light and started driving toward our house. I noticed the time and realized that I would be arriving home right about the time that my alarm clock would be going off on my bedside table. I turned toward the passenger seat to comment on the irony of the timing to EM2.

But she was sound asleep.

Asleep At the Wheel

As I have mentioned before, my first job in law enforcement was with the Hillsborough Police Department. What I may have failed to mention about HPD was that it was an extremely small agency. The city was residential homes only – no businesses and no shops – and no more than about 11,000 people resided there.

My badge number was 23, and that was the highest numbered badge in the agency. That might give you some idea of just how small we were.

I worked the graveyard shift for the first several years. Ordinarily, working all night as a police officer is not terribly difficult as there is always something to do to keep you awake and busy. Not in Hillsborough, however. It seemed like the town rolled up its streets at 11 o’clock every night.

With no businesses, and all the residents asleep at night, there was very little for an officer to do in the wee hours of the morning in that town. This was before we had cellphones that would let you watch movies, play games, or check out social media. In fact, if I’m being totally honest, this was before we had cell phones at all.

Some nights, I would read a book. Others, I might meet another officer in our department break room and put a movie into the VHS. Sometimes, however, I would park my car in a dark corner, turn my radio to maximum, and fall asleep.

This may shock some people who have never tried to stay up all night driving a car at slow speeds when there are absolutely no calls for service and nothing to do, but sometimes a graveyard cop just needs to take a nap.

It didn’t happen all the time, but it wasn’t rare either. Rather than fall asleep while driving and waking up parked on someone’s front lawn (which also happened more than I care to remember) it was safer to just park somewhere isolated and close my eyes. I had supervisors that told us they would rather we get some sleep when we need it, instead of crashing the patrol car. It meant less paperwork for them and smaller insurance premiums for the city.

Until one day in briefing, we got a new memo. My sergeant announced that the new chief, Bob McNichol, had announced a moratorium on any cops sleeping while on duty. It had always technically been against the rules, but now the chief was asking the supervisors to enforce the rule and write up any officers caught sleeping in their patrol cars.

My sergeant shook his head at the new order. “This is bullshit,” he said to me and the other officers in the briefing room. “When the chief was a patrol officer, he was asleep in his uniform more than he was awake in it. They might as well have been pajamas.”

But the rules are the rules. My sergeant told us all that from that day forward, if he caught anyone sleeping, it would mean a write up in their file.

I lasted about a week.

One night, there was nothing going on and I was absolutely exhausted from lack of sleep during that past day. The sergeant had warned everyone to stay awake, but it wasn’t as if he was driving around actively searching for officers breaking this particular rule. I decided that I was going to risk it. Just this once.

I pulled my patrol car into the city corps yard, where all the black and white vehicles that needed repair or that had not yet been put into service were located, backed into an empty parking spot to blend in with all the other vehicles, and closed my eyes.

I must have been more tired than I thought. I went out. Hard.

When I woke up, the sun was coming up and the sky had already lightened considerably.

I wiped the sleep crud out of my eyes and looked around. That was when my heart stopped beating for a second.

Parked directly next to me was my sergeant’s car, and he was sitting behind the wheel barely three feet away from me. I figured I was busted and resigned myself to a new letter in my file. I even spent a moment wondering if I should sign the reprimand in blue ink or use red just for dramatic effect.

That’s when I noticed something odd. My sergeant wasn’t looking at me. In fact, he wasn’t looking at anything.

He was fast asleep.

I guess he had pulled up next to me, then while waiting for me to wake up and notice him parked right beside me, he dozed off.

One trick you learn about sleeping in a patrol car is: always leave the car running. That way the radio is always on and you can keep the heater running on particularly cold nights. It is also a lot quieter if you need to leave in a hurry without having to start your engine first.

When I realized that the sergeant was out, I dropped my car into gear, released the brake, and let the car slowly roll out of the parking spot. When I was about ten feet away, I hit the gas and fled for the open road.

At the end of my shift, I just happened to see my sergeant in the halls of the police station as I was getting ready to leave. He waved at me and said, “See you tomorrow.”

I waved back.

That was it. No comments or reprimands about sleeping. I guess my disappearing act had made him realize that he, too, had fallen asleep. I had dodged a bullet.

Fortunately, he had no desire to throw stones in this particular glass house.

That was just fine with me. If he didn’t want to talk about it, then neither did I.

I ran for the parking lot, jumped in my personal vehicle and headed home.

I can’t say that was the last time I ever fell asleep while on duty, but I can say that was the last time I ever let myself get caught.

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