My wife and I found a kitten in July '01. He was only 2-3 weeks old, and the mother cat was nowhere to be found. So, we took this cat, as we’d discussed getting a playmate for our other cat before. We named him Isham.
It was difficult raising him at first. We had to feed him with an eyedropper every 4 hours; he required a lot of attention, since we was never properly weaned. He grew into a great cat. He cuddles between us at night, comes when he’s called, and provides us with lots of laughs.
However, about 3 months ago Isham developed a very strange and annoying habit. At night, just as we are falling asleep, he paws at our closet door (which is always shut), like he would to any door that he wants opened. He doesn’t use his claws, just the pads on the bottom of his feet. He also makes a high pitched meow/whine. My wife and I are very light sleepers, and when he does this, it always wakes us up.
Obviously, Isham wants in the closet. This, of course, is in direct opposition to what we want. We are very deliberate in keeping the closet door closed. Isham has slipped in there before and clawed his way to the top shelf, ruining several of my wife’s dresses in the process. When he finally reaches the top shelf, he always knocks things off and creates quite a mess.
The first thing we tried was locking him out of our bedroom at night. This doesn’t work because he does the same pawing/whining thing on our bedroom door, and it still wakes us up. We even put two doors between us, and he whines so loudly, we can still hear him. We can’t get him farther away, as our apartment is small and doesn’t have many rooms.
Next we tried water guns. My wife and I keep a filled water pistol on either side of the bed. When he makes the noises we give him a good squirt. But, the little rascal has learned to listen for the sounds of the water sloshing around in the guns as we pick them up, then he runs. Moments later, he’s back doing it again. Even though he’s been squired countless times, it’s not enough to make him stop. What’s worse, we think he’s made it into a game!
We tried ignoring him, hoping he’d tire himself out. No good. The little bugger will do it all night, 8 straight hours. The longer he goes, the louder his meow/whines gets, the more intense the pawing.
What we are doing now appears to work, but it’s not how we’d like to solve the problem. At night, after the first pawing session (we give him a chance to be good), we put him in his Pet Taxi cage. We put the cage in the farthest corner of the apartment, and shut our bedroom door.
I don’t like keeping him confined like that, but it’s the only way we can get any sleep anymore. We just want the obsession with the closet to end. Our other cat exhibits none of this behavior. I really hope some cat guru Doper can help us out. We are getting desperate.
