Damn Cat!

Last week was very up and down, but after reintroducing caffeine and smoking back into my daily routine (instead of trying to do off both cold-turkey), things seemed like they started to stabilize. Yesterday I actually felt pretty good, overall.

But today I'm struggling again, and I suspect I know why: the cat.

Our cat is VERY needy when it comes to food. He's diabetic (in remission), so that probably contributes. But all summer we've been fighting with him because he'll come into our room early in the morning and start meowing non-stop because he's hungry. Some days we're able to shut him up either by feeding him then (and hoping it buys us a few more hours of sleep) or by encouraging him to sleep with us (which is rare).

Lately though it hasn't gone well. Not only does he continue to meow even after feeding him early, but he's been coming into our room earlier and earlier.

This morning he started at 4:45 AM. I got up to pee as a result, and closed the door to our bedroom to keep him out. But that didn't matter; he continued to meow outside in the hall and started to paw at the door. My wife eventually got up and put a toolbox that we had in the hallway in front of our door to try and obstruct his accessibility to our door; no dice.

So from 5:00AM until almost 8:00AM all we could do it just lay in bed with our eyes closed, but not really "sleeping." As a result, I only got about 5hrs of sleep.

So not only did I get insufficient, interrupted sleep, but I woke up pissed off and irritated at the cat. This just triggers my Anxiety and has left me feeling pretty rotten today.

IT'S. NOT. FAIR!

I'm literally living day to day, desperately trying to hold on to whatever sliver of "normalicy" I can manage, and I'm left to feel like shit because my Anxiety gets triggered because the fucking CAT is HUNGRY!?

It's INFURIATING!

Short of locking him in the basement for the night so he doesn't interrupt our sleep, I don't know what else to do! But I CANNOT continue to have mornings like this again, because it clearly leads to bad days, and sometimes, bad weeks.

This isn't even a new thing. There have been numerous times in recent months where his insessant pre-dawn hunger-meows have triggered my anxiety even before I open my eyes!

It doesn't help that last night my wife was even starting to get under my skin with various comments and suggestions. For example (this is more for my own records) I said that I was going to spend a few hours playing games last night. So, when 8:00pm rolled around, I turned off whatever braindead show we were watching and turned on my game. I played 1 game and then waited for another online match to start. While sitting in the lobby for my 2nd game (which takes several minutes to allow players to show up) because I wasn't "playing" anything, she says "why don't you just put <random TV show on Netflix> on?"

So, because I'm sitting at a loading screen for more than a minute and you're bored, you want me to stop doing what I want to do!?

Yeah! Sure! Fuck me, right?? It's not like what I want to do is important to anyone including myself, right? Just because YOU'RE bored means that I should stop doing what I want to do to ensure that you're entertained, right?

The 2nd game timed out, and so did the 3rd, so out of frustration I shut down my game and put on <randon TV show on Netflix>; seemingly admitting defeat.

So I was already fighting my mind on that situation and the cat just pushed me over the edge today.

I've been VERY irritable, if not outright Angry. I'm clearly tired/drowsy. Many of my anxiety symptoms have started to return (especially the muscle tension and jitteriness), and I just generally don't feel "well" today. And why? Because of the actions of OTHER PEOPLE??

Great.