Pesky animals and sleep deprivation

This morning, I am grainy-eyed, nerve-trembly exhausted, and I feel a health crash lurking in the wings.

This is multi-factoral - we have some family stresses going on at the moment, plus I had a major medical appointment yesterday (went well, but the lead-up was anxious), plus the tension before the postal survey announcement, and the emotional release afterwards, took a toll.

However, a very key factor in my state of grumpy zombieness today is the extremely irritating behaviour of my cat.

With the warmer weather, Roxy (the cat) has taken to wanting to sleep outside in my covered courtyard adjacent to my bedroom. Fine, good, so far froody, right? EXCEPT. She also has a habit of deciding she wants to come inside for cuddles and "inside" water (somehow very superior to "outside" water) around 5am.

Until the last few days, she's mewed to get in, I've woken and let her in, she's had a drink, then curled up on the bed and we've both gone back to sleep. Not ideal, because it can often take me a long time to resettle when woken so far into my sleep, but borderline OK.

Her new pattern, though, is DOING MY HEAD IN.

Today, I awoke at 4:50am to her mewing. Got up, let her in, went to loo, back to bed. She had a drink from her water bowl then ... went back to door and mewed to go out again. I sighed, got up, let her out, back to bed.

Then three minutes later, she mewed to get back in again.

Rinse and repeat every 3-5 minutes for the next 45 MINUTES and I was a wet rag. Literally just as I would be starting to get sleepy, off she'd go again. I got super cross in the end and just left her in the courtyard and ignored her complaining. (I'm not a monster, she has a bed, a cathouse, food and water in the courtyard, and access to her preferred toileting zone near the front fence, so she didn't actually *need* anything).

She continued to grizzle for about 15 minutes before she finally gave up and (I assume) went back to her bed, but by then it was almost 6am and I was het up, not in a good state to sleep. I eventually did drop back off for a hectic 20-minute nap around 6:30 or so, but I am wrung out now and expect to fade severely later in the day, which is just what I do not have time to do with my current workload.

I am going to need to do something about this new behaviour. Sleep is a precarious blessing for me at the best of times, and a sooking cat is NOT going to be the reason that I do not get any and end up getting sick. I need to have a think about the best solutions to what is an increasingly troublesome problem.

(This is post #16 in NaBloPoMo. 16 down, 14 to go!)