The cat would wake its owner up every night and force her to go sleep on the sofa. She complained of insomnia, until one day she got tested.

I often get calls at night. For some reason, people think that if you’re a veterinarian, you’re obligated to answer every question in the universe. Especially at two in the morning, half asleep, with a cat lying on your chest.

But that call was during the day. And yet, there was such a nocturnal weariness in the woman’s voice that I automatically glanced at my watch. As if I could be wrong.

“Good morning, is this Pedro’s clinic?” The voice was cautious, as if she expected him to bite her.

— Yes, the clinic. Pedro speaking.

— My name is Carmen… I have an appointment today. I have a problem with my cat. He won’t let me sleep.

“Problem with the cat” and “it won’t let me sleep” is a huge territory. It can encompass everything from fleas to an existential crisis.

“Come and let’s take a look,” I told him. “We treat animals here, and we also treat insomnia.”

Carmen entered the doctor’s office like one enters a church: silently, almost guiltily. A woman in her early fifties, with a carefully styled hairdo, wearing a coat “for going out,” not “for going to the bakery,” and carrying a handbag she never leaves behind: her whole life is in it.

She carried the carrier as if it were a porcelain box. The porcelain shifted in displeasure.

“This is Marcos,” she said. “Although at night he’s no gentleman. He looks more like a nurse on duty.”

He placed the carrier on the table. Two enormous yellow eyes peered out from inside. A large, gray, fluffy, and heavy cat, with the expression of someone who had seen it all. He assessed me, decided I wasn’t an immediate threat, and turned away with dignity.

— Okay, let’s see the “nurse,” — I said. — Tell me.

Carmen sighed as if she were going to complain not about the cat, but about the community of neighbors.

“It wakes me up,” she said. “Every night. Not gently, but… insistently. Around three or four. First it touches my face with its paw. If I don’t react, it hits harder. It might bite, pull at the blanket, run all over me. It doesn’t calm down until I get up and go to sleep on the living room sofa.”

— And do you like the sofa? — I asked.

“He calms down there,” she said, annoyed. “As soon as I leave, he lies down on my bedroom pillow and sleeps until morning. And I sleep on the sofa. I hate it now. He used to sleep there when my husband snored. While he was alive. Now the cat has taken his place.”

Marcos pretended that the conversation had nothing to do with him.

— How long has this been happening?

— About three months. At first I thought: spring, hormones. Then the heat. Now it’s autumn and it doesn’t stop. Before, he slept with me, like a normal cat. Now he kicks me out.

She remained silent and added, looking to the side:

“I have high blood pressure, Pedro. I’m on medication. I need to sleep. I work as a property manager: we only have one elevator, that’s a whole other story… And I’m like a zombie. I’ve started to get angry with him. A couple of times I locked him in the kitchen: he yelled so much the neighbors were banging on the wall.”

“I’ve started to get angry with him” is the phrase after which many cats end up “up for adoption”.

I examined Marcos. He was healthy: shiny coat, calm breathing, a heart that functioned like an old but reliable engine. No sign of aggression or madness.

But something else was obvious: the way she looked at her owner. Not as a source of food, but as a responsibility. With concern.

“Has it always been quiet?” I asked.

— Yes. While my husband was alive, he was exemplary. They watched football together. Then… then my husband died and the cat came with me. We slept together. I would say, “At least someone is breathing next to me.”

He said it too easily.

— And now he doesn’t want me to breathe next to him, — I remarked.

“Exactly!” she exploded. “I’m joking that I’m being evicted from the dorm.”

Marcos approached and placed a paw on his shoe.

— Tell me, — I continued, — do you wake her up at about the same time?

— Yes. Almost always between three and four.

—And before that, do you sleep well?

— I think so. I go to bed around eleven, take the pill… and then I kind of sink into something. And he pulls me out.

I didn’t like the word “me saca”.

— How does it feel to wake up?

— Bad. Heavy head, racing heart, dry mouth. Sometimes I’m short of breath. I think it’s the tension. I put the pill under my tongue and go to the sofa. It passes after twenty minutes.

I asked a few more questions: about pauses in breathing, sudden gasps, the feeling that the heart “turns upside down.” It wasn’t exactly my area of ​​expertise anymore, but when someone ends up at a vet’s office with these symptoms, it means they haven’t been heard of somewhere.

— I’m afraid — I finally said — that in this story the main patient is not the cat.

– As?

— Marcos is fine. He hasn’t gone crazy, nor does he want to kick you out. What’s important to him is that something happens to you at night that scares him.

— Scared? I’m asleep.

— You think she’s asleep. He sees her stop breathing, or choke, or move abruptly. He doesn’t know what hypertension or sleep apnea is. He only knows that his owner isn’t feeling well. And he wakes her up. Until she changes position and feels better.

She looked at me as if I had just suggested she believe in superstitions.

— So… is he saving me?

“I can’t prove it,” I said honestly, “but there are too many coincidences. And I don’t think the problem is the cat.”

— But the doctor said it was nerves…

“’Nerves’ is a very convenient diagnosis,” I shrugged. “She has high blood pressure, night terrors, and a cat that goes off at the same time every night. I would start with tests: heart, breathing.”

— Blood test?

— Anything, the important thing is to start. And accept that perhaps the problem isn’t the cat. I can’t treat her: I’m a veterinarian. But I strongly advise her to go back to the doctor and say clearly:
“My cat wakes me up every night, I feel unwell, please run some tests.”

Carmen remained silent for a long time.
She stroked Marcos mechanically.

“Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll go.”

Three weeks later, Carmen called again…
and what the doctors told her completely changed the story of that cat.

Part 2…

She left the doctor’s office with Marcos in her arms, not in the carrier. I saw him crane his neck, look down the hallway, at the exit door, and then back at her, as if checking that everything was still under control. A stubborn little guardian.

Almost three weeks passed. At my job, stories overlap, and to be honest, I’d almost forgotten about them. Until one morning the phone rang.

— Pedro? It’s Carmen.

Her voice was different. Not cheerful, not euphoric. Alive.

“She went to the doctor,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

— Yes. I insisted. I said exactly what you advised me to say. That I was waking up at night, that I felt unwell, that the cat was practically kicking me out of bed.

He paused.

— I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Quite serious. And also some cardiac episodes… The doctor was very clear: if I had waited any longer, it could have ended very badly.

I closed my eyes for a second.

— Now I have a device, a mask, treatment. The first few nights were awful. Marcos was disoriented—he would look at me, at the tube, at the noises. But he didn’t wake me up. He stayed by my side. He just kept watch.

— And now? — I asked.

She laughed briefly, relieved.

— Now I sleep. All night. In bed. And you know what’s the strangest thing?

– Tell me.

— Marcos has gone back to sleeping with me. Not on the pillow. Not at my feet. With his snout close to my face. Like before.

He remained silent for a moment and added in a lower voice:

— And I no longer feel like he’s kicking me out. It’s like he’s been waiting until it was safe.

A week later they returned to the clinic. Officially, for Marcos’s annual check-up. Unofficially, I think Carmen needed to verify that it had all been real.

Marcos jumped onto the table by himself, surveyed the room, recognized me, and sat down calmly. The same big, gray cat, but he seemed lighter. Or perhaps it was me who was looking at him differently.

“He hasn’t hit me again, not even once,” Carmen said. “Not once.”

“He no longer has a reason,” I replied.

“You know,” he said after a while, “the doctor explained to me that many people live for years with sleep apnea without knowing it. And that sometimes… they simply don’t wake up.”

He looked at Marcos.

— I think if it hadn’t been for him…

He didn’t finish the sentence. It wasn’t necessary.

Marcos jumped to the ground and went towards the door, demanding to leave. As if his job was done.

When they left, I thought once again that animals have no words, no titles, no pretty explanations.

But they have something that we easily lose: attention to what is repeated, to what is out of the ordinary, to what does not fit into the rhythm of life.

And, above all, they don’t ask themselves if it’s rude to wake you up at three in the morning.

Since then, when someone comes into the office and says, “My cat does strange things,” I no longer smile condescendingly.

The first thing I ask is:

— And you… how do you sleep?