Nine Rules

Huffington Post has an article on “9 Simple Rules” for sleeping featuring a pictures of a cat, which we all know to be world class sleepers. I know, I know, but it isn’t written by Arianna. It’s written by one Lindsay Holmes, whose qualifications are not given, and it does not say whether or not she lives with any cats.

Rule 1: Take a shower or bath. I’ve never seen a cat take a shower, of course, but cats very often bathe vigorously before curling up and going to sleep. I have, however, had my cat jump into my lap, curl up, and promptly give the appearance of being a dead cat with no preliminaries at all so we’ll give her, at best, a “maybe” on this one.

Rule 2: Wear actual pajamas. Oh, I don’t think so. Ever try to put silk pajamas on a cat? Don’t. Maybe she thinks that cats sleep so much that their fur coat can be considered pajamas and that they are “leisure class” beings who eat, hang out, and watch TV in their pajamas, but… No on this one.

Rule 3: Turn your bed into a haven. Well, clearly not. A cat will sleep anywhere, including on top of your toaster oven and, if you give it a chance to do so, inside your microwave. Neither of those could be considered a “haven,” although one could claim that the cat turned them into havens by sleeping there. That’s stretching it, though, so no.

Rule 4: Create realistic limits. Give me a break. Cats have no realistic limits about anything, and certainly not about sleeping. Total no on this one.

Rule 5: Set sleep alarm. Well, maybe. My cat will give every appearance of being comatose and suddenly her head will pop up like a jack-in-the-box. She will give me a blank stare, stand up and stretch with her back arched, and stroll into the kitchen for a snack. There better be a snack available at that point, or I will get yelled at. Some sort of alarm went off, although it may not have been a sleep alarm per se. We’ll have to give this one some more thought.

Rule 6: Don’t go to bed hungry. I think I’ll give her this one. My cat has only one mode when she’s hungry, and that consists of harassing me to correct the condition from which she is suffering at that time.

Rule 7: Write everything down. On the face of it, no, but if my cat finds where I dropped a potato chip, she will go back there every time she comes in that room for the next several weeks to see if I dropped another potato chip. She may have written down where that chip was. That does not, however, have anything to do with her sleeping, so we’ll stay with the no.

Rule 8: Tap into your inner child. Well, okay, cats are very, very good at tapping into their inner children. Cats are inextricably bound to their inner children. That’s why the internet is full of cat videos. This one is a no brainier.

Rule 9: No phones. I’m not sure how to score this one. Certainly cats don’t sleep with phones, but then they don’t care much for them when awake either. My cat tends to freak out and flee the room whenever the phone rings, so sleeping with a phone would definitely be counterproductive. Cats and phones just don’t belong in the same conversation, so we’ll just score this one a swing and a miss.

If you’re waiting for a conclusion, sorry, I have none. A conclusion would imply that all of this has some degree of significance, and it’s pretty obvious that it does not.