Last night was one of those nights where I just didn’t get enough sleep, which I blame totally on our two wonderful pets, although I didn’t think they were that wonderful last night.

It started with Max walking around our bedroom. We have hardwood floors throughout the house, so when Max walks around all you here is the tick, tick, tick of those nails of his on the floor. I heard the ticks, but laid there anyway hoping my wife would hear them also and get up to let Max outside to do his business. When she didn’t wake up I dragged myself out of bed and escorted Max to the back door. I was hoping it wasn’t time to get up for work because I was still quite tired. I was surprised when I saw it was only 10 o’clock! That meant I could get back to sleep for another 4 1/2 hours!

When Max and I made our way back to the bedroom, my wife said, “Sorry, I didn’t hear him.” Yeah, right. I’ve pulled the exact same trick on her, so she wasn’t fooling anyone.

Next thing I knew I woke up to my wife saying, “Charlie, stop that.” Apparently, our cat decided to give himself a bath at 1 AM on the bed. My wife could sleep through a freight train, so I have no idea how a cat licking itself could wake her up from a deep sleep. The mysteries of life. Now, we were both awake, again.

15 minutes later Charlie was standing just inside the bedroom door and started meowing. And meowing. And meowing. I finally got up and went out to the kitchen to give him some food just to shut him up. By now it was around 1:30 and I had to get up in an hour to get ready for work.

I couldn’t sleep anymore. I just laid around until 2:30 and then got up to take a shower. By the time I left the house, Max, Charlie, and my wife were all sound asleep.

Funny how that works!