Selling Jackson to the Gypsies

I have two cats.

Cami is 9 years old and most of the time, she is an angel. She doesn’t make a lot of noise, she waits patiently to be fed, likes to be near people and is even occasionally affectionate. The worst thing Cami ever does is urinate outside of the litter box if I have been significantly remiss in my duties – which is rare, and pretty much my own fault. She’s quite well-behaved and a very low-maintenance cat.

A few years back I had the bright idea to get another cat to keep her company. I felt guilty leaving her alone all day. In retrospect this seems rather silly since most cats sleep all day, and Cami is no exception. Since she was a girl, I figured that it would work best if her companion was a boy.

And along came Jackson. Jackson is about 4 years old now, but when I got him he was a tiny little adorable kitten. He purred a lot and loved attention. He was (and still is) my “baby.” He always had more energy than Cami, and at first I thought this was a good thing.

However, lately Jackson is driving me nutso. He runs around in the middle of the night and when he’s particularly determined to wake me up, he runs across the bed at various trajectories – usually it’s across my legs, but he’s also been known to run across my head (that’s the worst), torso, or other delicate bits. It’s most disconcerting to be woken up in such a fashion. 3 or 4am is not my idea of a great wake-up call.

It’s particularly bad when my boyfriend stays over. It’s completely endearing and charming that T loves cats despite being allergic to them; he always seeks out Cami and Jackson minutes after arriving, and interacts with them in a playful and loving way. He just takes care to wash his hands afterwards. He takes an allergy pill if he’s staying for a while, just to be sure.

Sleeping here is another matter. If I know that T is going to stay over, I do the best I can to prepare: I wash the sheets and pillowcases, vacuum, swiffer, and use the lint remover on anything that might retain errant cat hairs. All in all, we are both pretty good about controlling his allergy (still, I suspect he has serious misgivings about our moving in together – and rightly so – but that is fodder for another post).

Despite his allergy, T loves cats. But having a cat run across various parts of your body while trying to sleep is totally unacceptable. And when I am at home alone, I deal with it in various ways: I shut the bedroom door (Jackson meows louder and louder outside of it), I fill his food dish (sometimes this works), or I put a pillow over my head and arrange my body so that a cat-race around my bedroom will not cause significant discomfort (but will always inevitably wake me up).

Eventually Jackson calms down and lets me sleep. But when T is here I cannot “wait it out,” and am thus plagued by insomnia. I feel so guilty! I mean, T is extremely tolerant and understanding but when he comes over he already fights an allergy – the least I can do is try to ensure he has the best sleep possible (and I want nothing more than to escape into a peaceful slumber myself)!

Nights like this, when I am woken up over & over, feeling fatigued, stressed and guilty, are the nights that I get grumpy and tell Jackson that I am “selling him to the gypsies.” In the light of the day I try to find practical solutions (although I am not so productive on 3 or 4 hours sleep, ha!) but I feel defeated. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get rid of Jackson, but I can’t imagine living the rest of my life like this.

And with that, I am off to attempt some slumber; maybe the answer will come to me in a dream!