The Art of Napping

If you have ever owned a cat (or more correctly, if a cat has ever owned you), you know that cats sleep a lot.  According to catster.com, cats can sleep up to 16 hours a day, more as they get older (I can relate).   As a somewhat fitful napper, I am always jealous of how my cats have seemed to be able to nap comfortably almost anywhere … and appear blissfully at ease in the most interesting positions.   Yes, there’s stretching, too, but we’ll leave that for another day.  However, my newest feline companion, Claude, between his Rorschach-Test markings and the variation of positions he assumes in his beds, raises napping to the level of art.   Here is a collage of just a few of his abstract patterns.

Yard Naps

During the last month, I’ve begun to pry the steering wheel of this sixty-eight year old body from the hands of my Inner Forty Year Old (who keeps chanting, Sixty is the new forty.  Sixty is the new forty.) and take control with this sixty-eight year old brain.  Part of that process is breaking a life-long habit of sleep deprivation.  This week, I’ve decided to stop fighting the fatigue I’ve been feeling lately and start sleeping as much as this old body tells me to.  I’ve been trying to get eight hours of sleep a night and I’ve been napping when I feel the need.  Where to nap is, of course, an issue.  My recliner is a good place for an early evening snooze but it’s on the flight path to the kitchen during the day.  Our bed is comfy and cozy, but if I settle there, Mr. P, our son’s Siamese cat is sure to join me.  Since he can sleep anywhere, anytime, he assumes that jumping on top of me while I’m sleeping, then circling for a minute or two before settling in won’t wake me.  Wrong, Mr. P.   By the way … wouldn’t you love to be able to sleep like a cat?

Nap? Me?

My wife, Muri, loves sleep.  You can see it.  When she’s sleeping she has a blissful expression, the corners of her mouth turned up slightly in a smile.  She sleeps like a cat, totally luxuriating in the experience.   I, on the other hand, don’t like to sleep.  It seems like a waste of time when there are things to do and even if there’s nothing to do, I’d rather do it awake.  Early morning and late evening seem to be my most productive times … isn’t that the purpose of life, to be productive? No?  During my working-full-time years, I could say, I have to work all day, so I need my mornings and evenings for myself.  I’m semi-retired and nothing’s changed.  I seem to get a second wind at about 9:30 pm and do most of my blogging between then and midnight.  Periodically, I vow to get to bed earlier or try to go back to sleep in the morning but it never lasts.  Lately, though, I’m exhausted mid-afternoon.   Some days, I can fight my way through it, caffeinate myself and stay busy.  Others, I know … I’m going to nap.  I tell Muri, I think I need to nap, settle into my recliner, read a bit or play a bit of Mole Word, then I’m out.  REALLY out.  I’m my Dad, asleep in his recliner, book in lap or TV on.   I don’t like it one bit and I don’t like waking up groggy, having to give up another half hour of my day trying to get productive again.  I know, human being not human doing.  Sorry, Psychology Today.   This need to nap makes me feel old.   Wait.  I am old!  The forty-year old inside my head keeps forgetting that.