When your pet is your cuddle buddy and your sleep saboteur

It’s hard to resist the comfort of a warm, furry companion snuggled up beside you. For many pet owners, sharing the bed with a dog or cat is a nightly ritual that feels like a natural part of home life. But according to sleep experts, this well-intentioned bonding habit might be interfering with your ability to get a good night’s rest.

“Pets are wonderful for emotional support,” says Melissa Milanak, a sleep health specialist and professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. “But when it comes to sleep quality, they often do more harm than good—even if owners aren’t always ready to admit it.”

Many pet owners feel the emotional rewards outweigh the occasional nudge

Milanak says that many of her patients report being disturbed by their pets during the night, often without realising how deeply it affects their rest. “You can’t say that hands down, it’s bad for everyone,” she clarifies. “But there is a lot of evidence pointing to negative impacts on sleep.”

Cats and dogs naturally follow different sleep patterns from humans. Dogs tend to be light sleepers, waking several times through the night, sometimes scratching or shifting around. While this may not always fully wake their owners, it can still prevent them from entering deeper, more restorative sleep phases.

Cats, on the other hand, are often nocturnal or crepuscular—meaning they’re most active at dawn and dusk. This is why many cat owners are familiar with “the zoomies” just as they’re winding down for bed or before their alarm goes off in the morning.

There are also physical factors to consider. Pet dander, allergens, and microbes tracked in from outside can affect breathing and trigger allergies—yet another contributor to disrupted sleep.

Dr Brian Chin, professor of social and health psychology at Trinity College in Connecticut, has studied how pets affect sleep. His research shows that co-sleeping with animals is often associated with poorer sleep quality, particularly in terms of insomnia symptoms. And it doesn’t help that many pet owners underreport issues, either out of affection or denial.

“I hate to admit that my cat disrupts my sleep,” Chin confesses. “One keeps me up, the other doesn’t—but I still let them both sleep in the bed.”

His findings also suggest that the more pets one has, the more likely they are to experience sleep disruptions.

So what can you do about it?

It’s not as easy as simply kicking your beloved companion out of the bedroom. “For many people, having their pet nearby is part of their sleep routine,” Milanak says. “Take that away and it can actually make it harder for them to fall asleep.”

Instead, she approaches the topic gently, often asking her patients a series of questions to uncover the real cause behind poor sleep. If pets are a factor, she then discusses whether they’d be open to trying a different arrangement.

One practical step is moving the pet to a separate bed on the floor of the same room—or in the case of particularly disruptive cats, keeping them out of the bedroom entirely. For those unwilling to banish their pets, Milanak suggests maintaining good hygiene by washing sheets more frequently, and even adjusting sleep schedules to better sync with their pet’s natural rhythms.

“Maybe you need to go to bed a little earlier so you can get up when your pet does,” she offers.

Still, many pet owners feel the emotional rewards outweigh the occasional nudge or sneeze. Angela Wilson, a dog owner from Georgia, says her golden retriever Sadie always finds her way into the bed, despite having a plush sleeping mat of her own.

“She’s very gentle,” Wilson says. “She doesn’t wake me up—we usually sleep peacefully, back to back.”

Ultimately, if sharing your bed with a pet isn’t impacting your health or energy levels, there may not be a need to change the habit. But if you’re waking up tired and can’t figure out why, the culprit might just be curled up at your feet.

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