I’ve written before about Renton’s recent habit of sleeping on my pillow at night. I guess it’s not so recent now; he’s been doing it for quite a few months. There’s never been a problem with it. If he takes up too much room I just head-butt him a bit. Problem solved.
Unfortunately, Renton never sleeps all curled up like a normal cat. He’ll roll over on his back or stretch out his legs at funny angles. He tosses and turns a lot at night as well. Add all this in with the fact that he is the clumsiest cat I have ever seen and you end up with the incident we had last Saturday night.
Sometime in the middle of that night I woke up to a searing pain on my forehead. My first waking memory is of me prying Renton’s paw, claws extended, off of my forehead. As I am doing this I realize that this paw is the only thing keeping him from falling over the bed — the rest of his body was dangling precariously off the edge. He must have rolled over too far in his sleep.
Now keep in mind this is no ordinary-sized cat. This is a big-butt, twelve pound applehead Siamese that eats too much and runs too little. And he was hanging off of my head.
Once I got him pried off he fell unceremoniously to the floor and I began gasping and sobbing uncontrollably. Hey, let’s face it: it hurt like a bitch and scared the shit out of me. It also didn’t help that I was half-asleep. By that time there was a very dazed Steven holding on to me, calming me down while trying to figure out what was wrong. Soon after, he threw the cats out of the room.
Thankfully I’ve no horrid scars; they are in my hairline anyway. And even though I was nervous, I let Renton back on my pillow again the next night. Not that I felt sorry for him, you understand, but because if you shut the door on him he will shake it back and forth with his paw.
All. Night. Long.
I guess we would rather have sleep with the possibility of a maiming than no sleep at all.