Wake-up calls

By Yetismith on August 7, 2024

6th August 2024

Luckily, insomnia is not the problem it once was for me and when I have a bad night or so now, it makes little difference since I no longer have to drag a sleep-deprived body to work.

For a large part of my life I had trouble sleeping, but apparently not always as I remember not infrequently waking up screaming from bad dreams. Usually I was being assaulted or trying to run away on legs that didn't work.

Sometimes I had dreams about aeroplanes that were crashing, though I was a witness, not a passenger. Those dreams didn't wake me but they did disturb me. Working in an airport those dreams were understandable.

Insomnia punctuated by episodes of parasomnia mostly left me when I retired and became a recluse.

Until fairly recently I had not woken screaming for years, so it was a surprise when it began happening again, but I realised why it was that I felt I was being assaulted, why my legs would not move.

Blackie had begun sleeping with me again. She sleeps very close and she is very solid. She does not stir when I try to turn over.

"OMG is that a kitten?"

After Lucy died last year, Willow also began sleeping on my bed, right by my feet. I am thrilled to have her there and I angle my legs diagonally across the bed, so that when I am not pinned down by Blackie, I can move without disturbing my girl.

We create our own problems when we allow animal companions to sleep with us. Many years and many cats ago, I awoke one morning with a strange feeling in my eye and was alarmed, when I inspected it, to perceive what appeared to be a golf ball where my eyeball should be.

It can happen if you get a cat hair in the eye, if you happen to be allergic to it.

At the time of this event I was working a midnight shift which gave me serious insomnia, but the emergency room doctor gave me a wonderful medication that laid me out for 12 hours straight, while my eye returned to its normal shape.

Regrettably, at 3 o'clock this morning the girls were rudely awaken by screams of "HELP!" that I cannot in any way account for, the dream being of a situation that would never have occurred.

It featured a small gathering of long-dead relatives who I had brought together for some unknown purpose that I apparently hoped to celebrate with a large cake which I asked my father to help serve, all of which was not going well but that was not the cause of distress.

The house, which I did not recognise, had two large fireplaces that I had set a match to. Although there were not yet flames in evidence, I was suddenly certain that there would be a conflagration and apparently too cowardly to deal with a non-fire, I yelled for HELP!

The cats fled, so at least when I awoke, grumpily, I was able to turn over and get up for a walk and a glass of water.

Still, 3 am is not so bad since there is enough time for a reasonable doze, unlike 5 o'clock at which hour I lie there thinking I ought really to get up and wait for sunrise, only to drop off at about 5 minutes before the downstairs mob announces: "BREAKFAST!" and that gets me off to a slow start, though come to think of it, that is what happened this morning...