Darn cat

I'm tired. Eyes drooping, fingers stiff and unyielding, ready to drink a pot of coffee tired. This is not great when my job, every day, is to sit in a room lit by fluorescent lights (no natural light) and look at a computer screen for, oh, I don't know, eight hours? This does not lend itself to me becoming more and more awake.

It's the cat. Every morning - yesterday it was 2:30 a.m., today it was 3:20 a.m. - she feels the need to wake up, meow loudly, and make noise until I grab her. I've tried throwing her out of the room, I've tried cuddling her, I've tried shoving her under the covers where it's warm and hoping that puts her to sleep, I've tried putting food in her already-full bowl, thinking she needs the sound of the kernels against the metal dish to get her salivating like Pavlov's dog. Oy. If I lock her out to the room she'll paw at the door. That's not so conducive to a good nights' sleep.

Today at 3:20 I just got up, same yesterday. Got up, got ready, went to work. I'm lucky enough that I can go in early. I start at 5 a.m. on a normal day anyway, which is why it's so hard to go back to sleep sometimes after el gato has made the noise she deems appropriate. It's almost time for me to wake up anyway, so then I just either lay in bed and wait for my alarm to go off, which I do sometimes and then I doze, or get up and go.

She's cuddly, she's cute, but my lack of sleep means I'm hungrier throughout the day. It's like my body needs more food to keep going because it's not getting ample rest at night, and then I definitely don't have the energy to work out. I had a run planned for yesterday. I took a four-hour sleep instead. In total that means yesterday I got eight hours of sleep! But then, wretched cycle, I wasn't tired last night at nine, so I went to bed at 11:30 p.m. and then woke up at 3:30 a.m. I'm trying for a walk today no matter what. I may not have the energy to run, but I can still walk my butt off.

So that darn cat. Any ideas on what to do to either make her quiet, or make me tired earlier? Throw 'em at me!