Why is it dogs will sleep peacefully whenever we do, while cats just won’t?

The dogs can sprawl across the bed and take more than their share of the space, but cats…

I know they are nocturnal, and so they sleep during the day and are up most of the night, but do they absolutely need me to be up all night, too? Apparently so.

We have two indoor cats now. One we adopted when she picked Jim up in the parking lot of our old property manager’s office. And Charlotte, our new addition, when she started as the small stray in the garage who found herself expecting.

The very day we brought her in to have the babies, Charlotte miscarried two kittens before they were ready. I think I was more upset than she was. She was maybe six months old, thin as a rail, and had no idea what was happening. After she lost the babies, we had her spayed, and she recovered inside with us. Tell me, after a cat has lived inside with you for three months, how can you put her back outside?

So now we have two cats inside.

There are between three and five outside, depending on weather and their mood. And they are just as bad at keeping us awake, because they climb our bedroom window screens to antagonize the indoor cats. Who then clamber all over the window ledge and meow like fiends to fend off the interlopers who cannot get inside.

And of course from time to time the front and back cats cross territories and have screaming matches in the driveway or back yard.

Our older cat is quiet, it took her more than a year to decide it is OK to sleep on the bed with us. But Charlotte has no qualms at all. She also has a Jack Reacher clock when it comes to meal times. (If you don’t know the reference, look it up and get reading, the books are addictive). At 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. sharp, every day, she loudly announces it’s dinner time. It makes no difference that we might be smack in the middle of something else and need her to wait five minutes. She’s not interested and not waiting. She’s a boss who brooks no excuses.

And at night, when I, in my older years getting up for bathroom breaks at least twice a night, get up to head to the powder room, she is right there with me. Mom is up, so it’s time for conversation and pets, and when I get back in bed, if I have not paid sufficient attention, she makes muffins, loudly and firmly, until I provide more pets.

But they are warm and loving and they are hilarious. When one of our weary dogs tries to pass by and one of the cats rolls over, arms and paws extended, to try to catch them, I do laugh. When Emily, an outside cat, loses track of where she is on the porch and her back end drops off the edge and she scrambles to keep her seat, I do laugh. When one cat knocks something in the water bowl, splashing water on the other who then leaps 10 feet and spins, looking madly for the assailant, I laugh.

And when they nestle in next to me, purring and keeping me warm when it’s a sleepless night, I admit, it ends up being worth the nights they keep me up. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Elisabeth Strillacci covers crime, courts, Spencer, East Spencer and Kannapolis for the Salisbury Post.