My kitty (a five year old indoor-only unsnipped tom) sleeps with us if he cares to, but usually he doesn’t. Only when he’s cold. I don’t mind when he does, except when he gets under the covers. I hate that.
When I had a puppy I loved sleeping with 'em. The last one I had was a 3-year-old lab/retriever mix that would stretch out across the whole top of the bed, and I’d just use her as a pillow. She never got up in the middle of the night, and she was warm and toasty.
K.
From “…And the mouse police never sleeps” by Jethro Tull (Heavy Horses Album):
Muscled, black with steel-green eye
swishing through the rye grass
with thoughts of mouse-and-apple pie.
Tail balancing at half-mast.
…And the mouse police never sleeps —
lying in the cherry tree.
Savage bed foot-warmer of purest feline ancestry.
Look out, little furry folk!
He’s the all-night working cat.
Eats but one in every ten —
leaves the others on the mat.
…And the mouse police never sleeps —
Why give up such a utilitarian item as a free bed foot-warmer?
We have three cats living in our house, one is ours and the other two belong to my sister in law. I will occasionally find hers lying on our bed but as soon as they see me they leave skid marks in their haste to escape.
Our cat is a snuggly little thing and if he can manage he will sneak into our bed and lie right behind my knees. There is little enough room as there is as I share the bed with Lola and by morning our daughters have crawled in too. The cat invariably loses in this scenario. He thought being tossed out of bed was okay until I coated the walls with teflon. I’m kidding. I have to lock him out or he will keep trying to find a warm spot to sleep in. At least he doesn’t meow or scratch the door like the other two cats will.
Our dogs… one is too short to make the jump but would sleep with us if she could and the other has never been allowed to sleep in our bed.
85 pound black lab/pointer.
Before my marriage and our first baby (Star) all my pets were outside pets. This one was to be an inside dog.
She has been sleeping in our bed since that fateful night that we put her in one of those gate cages, her crate in the middle with her bed in it. (She was crate trained) She was only about three months old, little tiny, cuty, bunny-hopping puppy with sharp little teeth that she liked to nibble your finger with.
So this wittle tiny stinky breath puppy somehow pulled her bed halfway out of the crate, climbed onto the bed and onto the crate and leapt over the two foot high wall surrounding her and set off the motion detector. The security company calls our parents… break-in and they track us down at the party we are at. We rush home, turn off the very loud alarm and find our cute wittle Star peeking out from behind the couch.
Ever since then, she has had the option to sleep in our bed.
I might add that she had a digestive illness about six months later and shat all over me and the bed. I cleaned us both up and spent the rest of the night curled up with her on the kitchen floor, but that’s the kind of demented, loving puppy daddy I am.
She is three years old now and sleeps on her bean-bag bed next to our bed. Then she climbs up into bed with us during the night… most often when it is cold. She also sleeps on our bed when we aren’t home or when she goes up to bed before us. She will also sleep next to one of us when the other is away or staying up late. She sheds something awful, there is a full lint collector of black puppy hairs whenever we wash her blanket or the sheets.
So, that is my story. Of course, I also share my spoon with her when I am eating ice cream, so you many not want to pattern your animal relationships on me.
Five dogs that weigh 80 lbs or more. One itty-bitty bed. What do you think?
Really, though, I’ve never had animals spend the night in the house unless they were recuperating from injury or illness. Even the dog I had as a kid slept in the garage. (Fish don’t count :))
I do admit that when I spent the night at my then-fiancee, now ex-husband’s place, his enormous cat would sometimes join me in the bed when the SO was getting ready for work (my start time was later than his). I guess I didn’t mind it because it was trading one snoring male for another.
Although I like cats, I won’t have them because I wouldn’t want to keep them indoors for a variety of reasons, nor would I want to keep them outdoors for fear of them getting hurt or killed by a car or other animal. I’d better stick to dogs, which will (generally) stay inside a fenced yard.
Although it’s been some years now, I’ve had cats in the past and never worried about them sleeping on my bed. Well, except for one which developed the habit of sprawling across my face at four in the morning or thereabouts. After giving him a few impromptu flying lessons, however (well, not quite) we managed to acheive detente.
I have 2 cats, a 2 yr old and 11 week old, and they both wander in and out as they choose. I leave the bedroom door open and they will usually curl up on the bed at various times. The especially like coming to bed when my bf is over because he is so warm to lay against. The kitten likes to nibble on my fingers at about 8 am (I don’t get up until noon for work) but I generally toss him off the bed and he goes to play by himself. The most relaxing thing to me is to hear my two boys purring at me right before I go to bed.
Our two dogs sleep with us almost every night. The older one Lou starts out at the foot of the bed but ends up right next to my butt by morning. Buck, younger & furrier may spend a few minutes in the bed but he usually goes and sleeps in his own bed eventually unless it is really cold. I think the waterbed may be too hot for him otherwise. It’s true dogs are pack animals and it is natural for them to want to sleep with the alpha dog. I think it’s sweet.
I guess that’s where you and I differ, Kim. My SO comes before the cats, always. 'twasn’t a hard decision for me - the cat hair bothered my lovey, so they can sleep outside. I got him to keep me warm, and he does a better job than the cats EVER did.
I used to raise Siamese cats. When I had two, they used to sleep on my bed. They slept there, and if they woke up they left the bedroom. Then I kept one of the kittens, and Kobii made three.
Kobii was made of sterner stuff. When SHE woke up, she wanted attention. First she would sit on my chest and stare at me until I woke up. And if you don’t think a cat staring at you can wake you up, you obviously don’t have a cat. After a while, I decided that when she woke me up, I would pretend to be asleep, so she would stop expecting this to work, and she would stop.
Well, when this didn’t work for her anymore, she started “patting” my face with her paws. Again, I started pretending to be asleep when this happened.
One night, when I was pretending to be asleep, and she realized that patting my face wasn’t working, she reached up and nipped my nose.
No more cats in the bedroom. Have you ever tried to explain a scab on your nose by saying “My cat nipped my nose?” I couldn’t handle the weird looks I got.
I love her to distraction, but she sleeps OUTSIDE the bedroom door, thank you very much.
Right now I’m taking care of my friend’s cat while he’s in California. Stinky (:rolleyes: I hate that name) has been sleeping on my bed now that he has calmed down since the trip from Cape May. I love it. But I doubt if I would have much recourse to keeping him off the bed other than closing the door to him, and I’d hate to do that.
I say this because I had two good-sized dogs that slept where they wanted to - sometimes on the bed, often elsewhere. Once, my uncle and aunt came to visit me while I lived with the dogs in Idaho. My uncle was a farmer and had a typical “all animals must be outside” attitude (he would have never said anything to me about my dogs being inside - that was my decision and business). I gave Uncle and Auntie my bed to sleep in while I slept in a sleeping bag on the living room floor. During the middle of the night, I woke up, glanced in my room expecting to see the dogs on the floor. No dogs. Moved a little to the left. Yep, there they were asleep on the foot end of the bed. Uncle and Auntie had no idea they were there.
One of our cats, Noel, won’t sleep with anyone. She just refuses to. Hmmm. Well, she doesn’t really SLEEP at night. She sleeps during the day and roams the house at night.
Misty, on the other hand, always sleeps with my parents now, usually with my dad, since she adopted him. When we first got her, she would curl up right on his neck at night. Now she sleeps at the bottom of the bed, but if he gets up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, she follows him downstairs and back up again.
Lassie, our dog (a Westie-my sister named her!) sleeps downstairs on the couch. She used to sleep with my sister, but her legs bother her (arthritis) and it’s hard for her to get upstairs. She only goes up into my folks’ room if there’s a thunder storm. She’s a pain in the ass to sleep with because she’ll get right on your feet and growl and snap if you roll over on her!
When Fluffy was alive, before she had her first stroke, she slept with me or my parents, only once in awhile with my sister. She’d always sleep at the bottom of my bed and when I was little and I’d get scared, I’d take Fluffy with me. She made me feel safe, because I wasn’t alone.
I want a kitten now, since I can never get Misty to stay with me longer than ten minutes.
I don’t own a bed. My cat owns a very nice, large human bed which she will occationally allow me foot or two of sleeping space, while she sprawls out to her full length across the width of the bed. And when I try to move her, she bites me.
Maybe my little Siamese angel is a bit spoiled?
You can sleep on with your pets, but you can’t sleep with your pets. Repeat after me: us… them… us… them… us… them…
Hey Swiddles!
Maybe it is the breed?
Or maybe it is us. Mine is just a “tiny” bit spoiled, too.
Scotti
I tried to keep my cat out of my bed when I first got her. It didn’t work. She sleeps in my bed, but usually when I’m not in it. She doesn’t like me rolling over on her.
HyperKitty has calmed down somewhat, and does sleep on the end of the bed. Unlike most cats, she does not wake us up in the morning (batting, chewing toes, sitting on one’s stomach). She will however, before settling down for the night, walk across the top of the bed (near the headboard), and if your head happens to be there, it becomes a stepping stone to the other side, then meander to the foot of the bed. Then she will settle down curled up between my feet, so I am stuck in that position for most of the night. It’s better than when she used to sleep next to me and push me to the edge of the bed (queen-sized bed and I have 8 inches of sleeping area).
Alexander Selkirk was the real life inspiration for the story Robinson Crusoe. He was a sailor who fought with his captain and asked to be put ashore on a small island. He spent four years on this island.
I know, you think I accidentally posted this to the wrong thread. But bear with me. Here is a passage from Capt. Woodes Rogers book, “A Voyage Around the World” printed in London, 1712.
“He was at first much pestered with cats and rats that bred in great numbers from some of each species which had got ashore from ships that put in there for wood and water. The rats gnawed his feet and clothes whilst asleep, which obliged him to cherish the cats with his goats’ flesh, by which so many of them became so tame, that they would lie about in hundreds, and soon delivered him from the rats. He likewise tamed some kids; to divert himself, would now and then sing and dance with them and his cats; so that by the favor of providence, and the vigor of his youth, being now but thirty years old, he came, at last, to conquer all the inconveniences of his solitude, and to be very easy.”
After he left the island, he had trouble readjusting. He sometimes said he wished he’d stayed on the island. Well, we know why, don’t we? He missed the kitties!
Boomer (the dog) sleeps in the basement, because he absolutely sheds too much. I won’t change bedding every day. Nope. I won’t.
Rick (cat from hell) trots to the bedroom along with us. If the bed isn’t made (like, every day) he perches on the foot rail to get out of the way until it’s made. He lays (lies?) over our feet. If you leave a hand outside the covers, he pats it until he’s petted.
Mick (the chubby lovey cat) sleeps on the bed, but not if we’re in it. Sometimes he’ll be at the foot of the bed in the morning, but only if Rick’s there too.