I am not, by any means, a good sleeper.
I used to be worse and would barely sleep, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that there are times when there’s no point in being awake. Still, I’m a light sleeper and will wake up for anything—a car driving by, someone walking past our apartment, a shuttle launch down in Cape Canaveral. Throw in a kicky, restless puggle that can’t decide if she’d rather be under the covers or under some of the covers or on top of the covers or on top of the humans or under the humans or in-between the humans or sharing the human’s pillows or oh is it snack time already?... Suffice it to say, I wake up a lot at night.
Sometimes I wake up and I’m fine. Stumble to the bathroom and I’m out again in a couple of seconds. Sometimes I awake and worry about people I love dying. Sometimes I get angry that I have to get up in an hour. Sometimes I wonder why I wake up at the exact same time repeatedly (it was 3:30A on the nose, but it's recently shifted to 4:28), and then start thinking about Stephen King’s Insomnia and if I’ll be seeing the little white alien doctors anytime soon, and if I'll eventually progress to not being able to sleep at all. Other times I worry about my apartment being infested by gremlins or how unsafe it would be in a zombie attack, and wonder why I ever moved into it in the first place when I knew it was unfit from the get-go.
Monday night I had a new one. Last week The Human Male and I rented Paranormal Activity. This was my decision—I heard it was scary, and despite my late-night concerns, I like scary things. The premise of the movie is simple: a guy and a girl have had an increase of weird occurrences in their house, so they decide to record it. You find out pretty early on that it’s a demon that’s been following the girl around her whole life and harassing her. So while it was scary, I wasn’t too concerned—I’m positive there hasn’t been a demon following me around for the past few decades (nor The Human Male).
Alas, 4:15 rolled around, and I awoke with a start. I don’t know why, and I never found out why. But I did have a suspicion: I’d suddenly contracted a demon.
And not just any demon: one that was dead set on reaching under the blankets to grab my feet. And I was terrified—not that it’d pull me away and bite me like in the movie, but that it would actually reach under my blankets to touch my feet. The horror!
I started getting flashes from the movie of the scariest scenes, and I just knew—KNEW—that I was a goner. My feet were going to be touched by a demon and I would have to die while The Human Male and Alice slumbered comfortably next to me. While growing more and more upset about my imminent demise and angry that The Human Male and Alice didn’t have to deal with this, it did cross my mind that Alice—who will wake from a dead sleep to bark at a leaf falling off a tree or dust settling on a counter in the middle of the night—might make a little noise if a demon sauntered into the bedroom. But what if the demon put some kind of spell on her and she didn’t?
With my tossing and turning, Alice woke up and decided it was time to move, lick my face, and play with toys. That’s when I got my brilliant idea. I picked up Alice, threw her under the blankets, and tucked my feet under her.
I think in my panic I’d thought that it’d be like a little alarm system: the demon would lift up the blankets to touch my feet, and the puggle would awaken and arise, barking the demon out of the apartment. My feet would stay safe (and subsequently quite cozy and warm under 21 pounds of puggle).
When I got up on Tuesday, however, I realized what I’d done: I was willing to sell out my dog so that a demon wouldn’t touch my feet.
My question to you is, what makes someone a good, responsible pet owner? Is it that you’re willing to take care of and protect your dog in real situations, or do you automatically get labeled as a bad one if you’d be willing to bid your dog arrivederci, sucka in outlandish ones?