How to Sleep Peacefully with Cats

For many cat owners, it is not negotiable, whether they will allow the cat to sleep with them or not. They simply love sharing their bed with cats. Although sleeping with cats can have some issues around, like the transmission of zoonoses (diseases that can spread between animals and humans) and poor sleep, many veterinarians are fond of sleeping with cats. Of course, they warn people about the risks it can have on human health, especially if someone’s health is affected by asthma or allergy. In most other cases, if the cat is vaccinated and protected from fleas and worms regularly, sleeping with cats offers their owners’ sense of comfort, contentment, and joy. The biggest challenge of peaceful sleeping is cats’ hyperactivity during the night that can disturb the sleep of their owners. In order to help cats’ owners to sleep without interruption, the article “How to Train Your Cat to Let You Sleep Sometimes” suggests some tips on how to sleep peacefully with cats.

• Try to establish a routine wherein you and kitty engage in a rousing play session just before you go to bed each night. After the final victorious pounce,
reward kitty with a snack. If all goes according to plan, kitty will be tuckered out, wash up, and settle into a blissful nap—which should buy you at
least one REM sleep cycle.

• An automatic feeder that deposits food a couple of times during the wee hours of the morning will probably attract your cat’s attention, and help fill his
tummy in a more novel way than grazing at the food bowl.

• Buy or construct a comfortable perch, and put it near your bed and by a window. This can work out quite well. Kitty gets to hang out near you, and he gets
to watch all the nocturnal goings-on outside that cats can see with their keen nighttime vision. And he drifts off to sleep in his own comfortable
furniture. You may want to look at perches that have sides, to make kitty feel more cozy. (We discuss this more in Part 2, below.) With this arrangement,
you may occasionally feel the pitter-patter of little feet running over you, but most cat parents tend to sleep right through it, or incorporate it into
their dreams.

• “Sleep machines” generate a soothing, steady sound, such as rainfall, which blocks out intermittent noises such as kitty scratching or using the litter
box. These devices do a decent job of filtering out routine noise and they may be a great bargain.

• Put toys around the house in hiding places that range from easy to moderately hard. The idea is that kitty finds the toys and is delighted to play with
his discoveries. You probably don’t want to hide toys with bells in them, or toys that make a lot of noise as they roll on the floor and bounce off the
walls. Add interest to the toy hunt by using a steady rotation of props, such as cardboard boxes; place the toy in the box, slightly under it, or on top
of it, teetering on the edge. Use your imagination—so kitty can use his. Yes, the toys will quickly collect under the couch, behind doors, in the closet,
and in various odd places such as in your shoes. That’s a given; it comes with the species, just like fur on the couch. Providing adequate stimulation for
our feline friends is part of the deal, and picking up a few cat toys here and there is nothing compared to the fun kitty experiences from playing with
them. Not to mention the sleep you’ll gain.

Whatever steps we choose to adjust our precious pet to our sleeping routine, time has shown up as the most decisive factor. Our love, patience, and persistence contribute in establishing a win-win situation where the cat can sleep in our bed, but that does not disturb us. However, before we even decide to allow the cat to approach our bedroom, we have to ask ourselves: are we comfortable enough to let the cat in our bed? This question is of the greatest importance because the irreversible process is almost impossible to bring in. Once the cat gets accustomed to sleeping in our bedroom, it will have much trouble to change its mind.