Henry Campaigns for a Good Night’s Sleep

Injustice rankles, particularly parental injustice

Created with OpenAI via DALL-E 3

Sleep is mostly what I do. Yes, I eat, play, pee, poop and valorously defend our premises from predators, real and imaginary, but sleep is my default, what I do when I’m not doing anything else. I sleep at any hour for any interval, never checking the clock. Humans invented clocks, I think, to torment themselves. There is no verb for oversleep in Dog.

I no more enjoy sleeping than I enjoy breathing. It’s what I do. I take no pills to induce or defer it. I do not pace the night. I do, however, resent being confined in a crate when Jane and Carll are stertorously luxuriating on a soft mattress not two feet distant. Is this just? What right have they to exclude me from the familial fusion at this lonely hour? Am I somehow less because I don’t gab, walk upright or pinch? They love me – I guess – but on their own terms, as one might a slave – to tousle and tussle at their convenience, not mine. I’d contact some committee on canine rights if I could concentrat…