As a card-carrying cat lady, I volunteer for a local rescue group and two days ago acquired a newborn litter of 5 kittens. They require a tedious and grubby procedure approximately every two hours: record the amount of kitten formula consumed and “stimulate” them to urinate and defecate with a tissue.
Last night I got up at 3 a.m., went to the bathroom, took the formula out of the fridge, put it in a cup of hot water to warm up, went to the kitten room, wrote “3:00 am” on their spreadsheet, turned on the scale, checked the temp of the bottle, weighed the bottle, picked up the first kitten, fed it, stimulated it, weighed the bottle again, recorded the grams consumed and moved on to the next kitten. I checked the spreadsheet to make sure I’d fed them all, covered up their basket, put the formula back in the fridge and returned to bed.
At 6 a.m I got up to feed them again. But there was no 3 a.m. entry on the spreadsheet and the bottle was ¾ full. I am dumbfounded. It seems that after I went to the bathroom, I must have returned to bed and dreamt the whole thing. It’s apparently a real phenomenon called “false awakening” and there was even a “Calvin and Hobbes” strip
referencing it. I can recall the details of the feedings with amazing clarity. Just my luck: better minds write symphonies or create the Periodic Table in their dreams. I dream about scrubbing cat butts.
Please let me know I’m not nuts! Do any of you have a similar experience to relate?
First - we’re the kittens OK for having missed that 3 am feeding?
And yes, I heard of that phenomena. I can’t recall experiencing it myself, but I’ve heard of it happening to other people caring for young animals (including human babies). Pretty sure sleep deprivation/disruption is a risk factor for it.
Yes, it can happen and sometimes when a dream is very realistic I might be momentarily uncertain about whether something really happened or not, but it’s rare and doesn’t last long.
I suspect that the reason that dreams are notoriously hard to remember unless you immediately write them down or dictate them or something – they vanish like the metaphorical breath off a butter knife – is because otherwise our brains would be littered with false memories.
I have had this experience a number of times throughout my life. I remember the first time was a morning when I was attending high school. I imagined I completed my entire hygiene routine until I truly awoke to my mother shaking my shoulder. It was disconcerting.
Another time I was an adult (sleeping in a recliner chair) and I dreamed I had finished making breakfast for my son and was packing his lunch. I thought it was all done and I suddenly awoke to find my hands carrying out the ghostly motions of applying a condiment to a slice of bread.
Yes, they were all sound asleep. I felt very guilty and expected them to be screaming. But bottle-fed kittens drink a lot more per feeding than what they get from their mom, so I guess they had some in reserve.
Once, in junior high, I made it all the way to lunch and then woke up and had to do it again. Switching schools had me repeating things I had already learned, so even ‘awake’ I spent most class time zoning in and out.
A bit TMI perhaps, but sometimes (just happened the other night) if I have a full bladder while sleeping I’ll dream that I’m relieving myself (fortunately I don’t also do this IRL while I’m asleep in bed). Then I’ll wake up and for a second think “why do I still have a full bladder? I just went.”
I’ve had the opposite happen; waking up and going through my entire morning routine, getting into the car and preparing to leave for work, to be interrupted by my wife screaming “it’s 2:30AM, what the hell are you doing”.
In my defense we had 7-month-old twins at the time, which caused me to lose all sense of time, space, sequence. I figured, if I’m awake, it must be either time to go to work or feed the kids, and I’m all about of milk.
I woke up one morning and found a box of matches on the kitchen table. I had pulled a few books out of the box, dunked them in milk, chewed them up and set them down. After about 3 tries I guess I went back to bed.
If that question is for me, honestly I don’t know if I was awake or asleep. But I was definitely headed to a 9AM job at 2:30AM with a packed lunch and everything in order, except my shoes were mismatched.
To this day I’m convinced a friend came to see me to check up on me at my home when I was in a fender bender back in high school (no injuries, car was repairable). The friend showed up, but I was in bed, so they popped into my room for a few minutes, we chatted about the accident and how I felt, then they left.
Turns, out, it never happened. I recounted the whole conversation to them the next day, and while they did say they were thinking of me, they did not make the 20 minute drive over late at night!
I’ve also solved work problems (design, or a way to phrase something in a report) in my sleep and then been very annoyed at having to “do it all again” the next day.
I’ve done sleep walking, night terrors, over dresming sincr childhood.
My first memory is sleep walking into a closet, door shut and dark. I woke up and started screaming my head off.
Then of course I freaked and redreamed the whole thing over and over. I just redreamed it recently.
As an adult I slept walk outside on the deck and took a dive. Messed up my shoulder. We have alarms on the exits now.
Woke up in my car a few times.
Made phone calls.
Ate.
Cooked.
Rocked babies.
Walked dogs.
Painted.
Sewed.
Cleaned. I’ve done alot of cleaning while asleep.
The dreaming and thinking it was really happening after awake is a new one. On me.
Back when I was a single parent, both working and going to school, I had a really tiring week after a series of tiring weeks. I tried sleeping in on Saturday. The kids came in to have me settle an argument while I was dreaming.
The dream kept going in the background in a flattened way, like a pale image on a window. I settled their problem and sent them back to watching TV. And the dream shifted toward me and I slipped back inside.
Mundane, pointless false awakening dreams I must share: in the process of making a pot of coffee this morning I was running water in the kitchen sink and it started filling up. Often a small clog just needs hitting the garbage disposal switch for a second, and it clears right out. Done it a million times. But I remembered, ugh, the garbage disposal’s not working. Did I already try the reset switch, or do I need to try the broom handle trick if it’s jammed? Don’t remember.
Then I realized I had just had a dream that the the sink was filling up and the garbage disposal was broken. It was a total dream deja vu mind ninja’ing. The disposal worked fine.
