The Perils of the Light Sleeper

Much to my annoyance, I am generally a rather light sleeper. It is to my even greater annoyance, therefore, that my partner is the complete opposite. Indeed, I am quite convinced that she could sleep through an earthquake without so much as a stir. And yet, not only is she a heavy sleeper, but she also possesses the uncanny ability to sleep at any time and place seemingly at whim; a concept that is completely foreign to me. Without wishing to state the obvious (but knowing full well that that is precisely what I am about to do), I find that I can only fall asleep when I can no longer stay awake. And, likewise, once I have woken up I feel awake, which makes attempting to fall back to sleep a difficult task. With this in mind, it is somewhat ironic that although Kat sets an alarm every night, it is not so much for her as it is for me; after all, it is only through me waking at the sound of her alarm going off, and thereby having to wake her in order to make her turn it off, that she gets up each morning. Nevertheless, it is not as though she has to be up at some ungodly hour, so I don't particularly mind. However, you can probably imagine my annoyance at being woken up in the small hours of this particular morning by the quiet but unmistakable sound of a cat. Vomiting.

And so began a frantic trail around the bedroom at half four in the morning in search of the half-digested remnants of Tilly's latest meal. Lights were turned on. Boxes were upturned. The carpet was scrubbed. And yet somehow Kat managed to remain fast asleep throughout the whole sorry saga. As if that was not irritating enough, I then found myself in the awful predicament of being both wide awake and desperately tired. This unpleasant stand-off persisted for at least another hour before I finally fell back to sleep, during which time Kat breathed more than one heavy, contented sigh as if to mock me from her happy state of partial consciousness.

I suppose it is true to say that my relationship with sleeping is somewhat antagonistic. For instance, many people say that they love sleeping, which, frankly, I find utterly ridiculous. I mean, let's be honest, sleeping is rather unmemorable, both literally and figuratively. It is a necessity, not a pastime. What they really mean, therefore, is that they like lazing around in bed, which, whilst I can relate to, I'm not sure I'd define as a pastime either. But having said that, perhaps if I wasn't such a light sleeper I wouldn't be so disparaging. After all, the joke is firmly on me, because today, unlike most, I am actually very much looking forward to going to sleep... God help the cat that wakes me tonight.