lock out | Bad Cat Chris

As most of you know, one of our biggest problems with having a bad cat is that he keeps us from getting a good night’s sleep. In our last three homes, there was always some impediment that kept us from locking him out of the bedroom at night, but since we have lived in our new home, we are finally able to close the door and get some sleep.

What’s different this time? Tile floors. Yep… Sweet, glorious tile, made in Heaven and placed on our floors by divine intervention, or by a flooring contractor, I’m not sure. The point is, it is the answer to our prayers. Well, technically, I didn’t pray for tile floors, but I would have if I would have thought it would work.

I didn’t notice until I saw this picture that Chris pulled a paint chip off the bottom of the door.

Now we can close our bedroom door and Chris can’t dig a hole in the tile like he could in the carpet. Of course, nothing is ever that easy with Chris. Our door has the lever type door knob that I described in my post, The Annoyance Strategy. This allowed Chris to pull the handle down and release it, making a loud noise. He would do this over and over until someone got up and opened the door.

Last time we had to change the door knob because locking it still allowed the handle to move up and down. This time the handle will not move when it is locked so as long as we remember to lock it, sleep is almost assured.

The amount of sleep we get is still not enough but I will take almost enough over what we were getting. Chris now stands outside the door at 5 a.m. and cries and scratches at the door until someone opens it. In another post I called him “Four O’clock Chris” because that is what time he would wake us up every morning. Now it is five o’clock. I’m not sure if he has improved or if he just does not recognize daylight savings time. In any case, I just wish I was home every day so I could wake him up promptly at 3:00 p.m.

I have tried to live a relatively healthy life and, except for an occasional slight issue, I have not been sick in over ten years. My concern lately was that I would be destined for an illness due to my lack of sleep caused by Chris waking me up early every morning. That hit home on Tuesday morning when I woke up with a minor sore throat.

I was planning on riding my bike to work and I feared that would be difficult with a sore throat. Fortunately I felt better after an hour or so but all day I did not feel quite right. The next morning I felt bad again and Rose insisted that we keep Chris out of the bedroom that night, which we had not done lately because she did not want to punish Puck for Chris’s bad behavior.

I set up the plastic under the door along with the brick and candles along the edges. I described this in a earlier post where I talked about how these were necessary to keep Chris from digging a hole in the carpet. In consideration for Puck, we left the door open when we went to bed. Usually, but not always, Chris can be in the bedroom with us when we go to sleep without any problems. It is at three or four o’clock that he becomes a huge pain, which is what happened on Thursday morning. Rose was nice enough to get up and throw him out and close the door. He cried for a while, dug at the plastic and scratched the door but I was actually able to sleep until 6:30, which I had not done in ages.

We left Chris and Puck with a sitter and are enjoying a couple of days, cat free, in New Smyrna Beach where I was actually able to sleep until 6:30 again. I still feel like this illness is trying to take over but it has not got me yet. I seem to feel worse when I get up in the morning and then better once I have been up for a little while. We are going home tomorrow and I really want to be better before I have to deal with Chris again. Maybe if we throw him out when he is bad he will eventually learn to stop waking me up so early. Probably not but either way, I should finally get the sleep I need.