Pets on bed- a hindrance?

I find that if my cat sleeps on my bed I have a harder time falling asleep… but then again it allows me to wake up more often to try and have a LD.

That’s strange. I could see how a pet might distract some LD inductions. I don’t see how it could effect your dream recall.

God, my cat sleeping on my bed makes it impossible for me to sleep!

Several years ago I had a cat. It was always sleeping in my bed. I almost couldn’t sleep without the warm, heavy creature on top of my feet. A while after id died, I woke up from the cat jumping up inyo my bed. Wait a sec…the cat is not supposed to be here… I got a LD from that. And, I got to meet my cat again. :content:

My cat helps me to do the whole “wake up earlier than usual, stay awake for an hour while reading about LDs, and go back to bed technique”. Since my cat is on a different sleep schedule than me, he will wake me up around 3 am wanting me to take him outside, so I get up and do that and just stay awake for an hour skimming through LD message boards.

Atheist posted a similar experience. He actually trained his cat to wake him up by taping him on the nose.

Sorry, I know that’s just a typo, but imagining your cat applying scotch tape to your nose is. . .funny (to me, at least).

My dog sleeps on my bed every night and she is such a pain. She likes to lounge so sometimes I’ll wake up and she’ll be taking up most of the bottom half of my bed. She jumps off pretty regularly which can wake me up and in the mornings, she wants to leave or she paws at my face (which doesn’t help my LD efforts). At the same time, I couldn’t live without her sleeping in my room, so I just deal with the bad aspects.

*What really gets me is when I get up early to go to school and she is all curled up, enjoying her sleeping time. It’s a little like sibling rivalry and the old, “Mom! How come SHE gets to sleep in?”

:tongue:

I’m not sure about dogs (never had one), but cats do everything like clockwork. They develop routines and stick to them with suspicious precision. My cat would always walk into my room at almost exactly the same time each morning, so I’d never need to use an alarm. In that regard, they can be useful for WBTB, since they force you to get out of bed and walk around at a time that usually suits the technique (~5AM).

It works both ways, though, as sometimes the little furry alarm clock would wake me up midway through a nice, long LD. Should have got her to recognise rapid eye movements and wait her turn. :tongue:

At times mine would push me off the bed if she could or insist on laying on top of me. But I agree I could not sleep any other way.

LOL. It’s funny how overly stupid we are when it comes to our pets. *And it’s a good thing for them, otherwise their little shenanigans would have them homeless before they could yelp “meow/woof”.

My cat that I have had for 3 years(got her as a kitten) attacks my feet at about 6:30 am every day.
And she did it as a kitten.
Works good for my dream recall.

:rofl: Yes they train us quite well.

Good night and happy dreams :smile:

I’ve had cats all my life… 2 which lived with me since I was a kid, for sixteen years and now my cat, Moebius.

It’s interesting because all my cats always slept either on the bed or somewhere near me… And in my case it has never hindered my dreams or my dream recall.

On the other hand I do recall a dream where I found one of my cat’s from when I was a kid, Max was his name. A big fellow, sitting on a bed in a room. In the dream I found a sudden tension build up as he looked up at me from the bed with his penetrating cat eyes.

I remember suddenly feeling ‘awe’ if that’s the proper word for it. An awe that was bordering fear. As if I understood very little of what he actually represented (the cat), as if their was much more to him than what one could actually see.

And I love cat’s!! I have never been scared of them, nor did the dream affect me in any way, yet it was strange to feel that stare in the dream. I found the word!! His stare was intelligent, as a person meets a persons gaze. In the dream my cat looked at me like so…

After finding this site and finally signing up :razz: I began focusing on LD. (I have always been fascinated by dreams, and dream recall was always something I ‘cultivated’ By all means it leaves much to desire in comparison to the level some people have achieved here for I can only define my ability with dreams as something “I achieve when the ‘desire’ is right.” And their are no ‘buts’ to it…)

Well, back to my cat :razz: (Went a little astray their) Since I’ve begun LD, I’ve come to suspect that I affect my cat, depending on what I dream, depending on the state of mind I’m in. Actually when doing work with the ‘third eye’, or trying to WILD, I’ve noticed how my cat get’s squirmy, maybe tense.

He than usually leaves the room. Now, he doesn’t always leave, but I can say almost all the time. It’s probably just a coincidence since he could just as well walk away every time I naturally fall asleep…

Anyways here my ramble on it :smile: I would like to add though that I actually believe that animals in general have a sensitivity to feelings, emotions, even maybe ‘focused’ ideas… They have an awareness that is hard to define, yet I am convinced it exists…

The way my cat always starts cuddling and purring when I’m feeling sad, the way he runs around and so when I’m awake and alert, and so on. Just examples and I’m sure that many cat-lovers can say the same. How their cat’s can seem to ‘understand’ them.

Sweet dreams…

Atheist, you have to tell us how you trained a cat to do that. Is your cat exceptionally intelligent or something? Or did you just begin rewarding it for something it had always done?

Cats are very… “routine-based”. In fact, they’re like clockwork. They learn how to get what they want, and they do it day after day without fail.

It all started when my cat realized that she could effectively get me out of bed whenever she pleased, just by scratching my posters off the wall while I was trying to sleep. The more I ignored her, the longer she persisted, shredding them into confetti. The only way to get her to stop was to get out of bed and let her outside, which is exactly what she wanted the whole time. Eventually my posters were removed, so she started jumping onto my desk and knocking things onto the floor. She was far too cute to get mad at, so I basically kept rearranging my room until there was nothing left for her to destroy, at which point she started jumping onto my bed and clawing at my face. Over the years that followed, this little routine was gradually fine-tuned so precisely that she’d always be there at exactly 5am, and the mere sound of her walking on my carpet would wake me.

I guess you could say she trained me, but hey, I’m a sucker for cute females.

lol, understood. Thanks for revealing your (cat’s) secrets.

i had a dog for 15 years which slept on my bed each night, i didnt realize i never had a dream untill shortly after she died… which was about her, and i think that perhaps her sleeping on my bed each night DID cause me to not sleep well, and or remember my dreams.

My cat sleeps with me, and I dream a lot…
Actually, the warmth from her body makes me more relaxed.

Weevil, perhaps you only do remember the important dreams - like the one with your dog, since I guess she meant much to you…

its true, i do have alot of dreams about my dog. but mostly just dreams about lost love, god, or the occasional pleasant dream with random mystery women.

So, yesterday night I decided to WILD. I lay on my back because I find it harder to fall asleep then, and my cat jumped up and lay on my stomach.
It all ended up with I found it very hard to breathe because of her weight (I think?), and I had to break off the whole thing just when I was soo near lucidity.