Can you train a cat to eat at a certain time?

I put this in IMHO because I don’t know if this is really GQ-ish. Mods can move it if appropriate.

My fiance and I have a very nice cat. He is accustomed to sleeping with us in the bed, but tends to wake up on his own clock to be fed. Sometimes he gets hungry around 6:00am when I usually get up, sometimes it is closer to 3:30am or 4:00am, when I feel more like turning him into a hat. He usually wakes me up to feed him by stepping on my head and meowing. It would be cute to anyone else who isn’t the one being awakened at 4:00am.

I have tried feeding him at a consistent time each morning at 6:00, but it doesn’t seem like he is getting on any kind of schedule. Is it possible to get this cat on a feeding schedule so that he doesn’t wake me up each morning like this? We are trying to avoid locking him out of the bedroom every night because he is very friendly and isn’t very comfortable when he’s not around one of us (we’re considering getting him a kitten companion to help with this), but it’s really affecting my sleep. I don’t mind him waking me up to feed him, just not this damn early.

No, it’s not. At least not in my experience. What I have found helps is to give the kitties a small amount of dry food directly before bed (but not too much because then they are up and running around all night) to keep them sated overnight. That helps some but, really, cats just do what cats do and there is no stopping them.

You could also look into getting an automatic feeder if you value sleep more than the cost of the feeder.

My cat has similar habits.

She gets fed every morning, regular as clockwork, at 7.30. Has done for the eight years she has been alive.

Yet she gets hungry any time between 5 and 7, and is very persistent about it.

My choices: lock her out of the bedroom and leave her whining at my closed bedroom door, or leave the door open and let her stomp on my face. As an insomniac who desperately needs my sleep, I’m less than pleased about either option.

They’re cats. They’re little untrainable selfish bastards - but we love them for it. I think really you need to let them train you to do what they want you to do, and live with it.

Though from what you say about your own situation, locking the kitty out of the room seems the best option.

Our cat gets 1/3 cup of food in the morning (between 6-7) and 1/3 cup in the evening (between about 6-7). That seems to keep him from begging for food at ungodly hours. Though he still wakes me up in the night when he decides he’s ready to come to bed with me after prowling the house for a few hours.

You can train cats that at a certain time they’ll get food. You can not however stop them from telling you they’re hungry when they’re hungry.

My cat gets 1/2 his food when I get up, and 1/2 when I get home from work. He knows when it is 5 o’clock because even on weekends, he will wake up from a sound sleep and come walking into the room waiting to be fed. The odd thing is, he does this even when he has food left. In the morning he doesn’t usually bug me, but he does seem very excited to get some food added to his bowl, even when there is plenty left.

We didn’t try to train our cats to eat at certain times, but they have come to expect it, and they start asking us for food if we don’t feed them then.

So I’d say the answer is definitely Yes.

After 10 or so years of feeding our cats canned food at 6 PM every night, they’d still typically be going crazy by 5 PM. Earlier, if they saw someone in the kitchen (human in kitchen = food is coming!). They were even free fed dry food, so it wasn’t like they were starving. They just learned that after everyone was home, and when someone was near the kitchen, something tasty was about to happen. I don’t think they have internal clocks.

Oh I beg to differ. I’ve had cats try to wake me up early and I’ve had cats that were overly insistent about treats.

As a few people have mentioned, it seems to me that cats do know when they get fed. In my experience, they just seem to get excited about it at least an hour beforehand. We have some cats that are on a canned-food-only program at the shelter, so they get meal-fed three times a day. You’d think they would be lackadaisical about dinner especially, since they already would have eaten breakfast at 7am and lunch at 12-1 pm. But by 5:00, at least a couple of them get all riled up every time someone new walks into the room, even though dinner’s not until 6 or 7.

At home, my three also get meal-fed only canned food, twice a day. I’m lucky, though, because they’re so undemonstrative about it that if I forget at night, or fall asleep, they all just nap with me and don’t get excited until they see me washing their bowls in preparation for refilling them. That’s rare, I’m very lucky. I have the best kitties ever. Had to brag.

If you haven’t tried giving a snack before bedtime, it might help, but if it’s the pre-meal excitement that I’ve experienced then you may be out of luck.

I appreciate all of the replies - this is kind of what I was expecting!

Just bring the bag of cat food into bed with you. At 4:30 you can throw a handful out there and go back to sleep.:slight_smile:

You just gave an example of what I said.:wink:

You can train cats (at least I have) to eat at a certain time, by reinforcing that with a secondary stimulus. Something like a bell being rung, or just a certain sound you make ONLY for that occasion (a particular whistle, for instance).

Essentially, though you are teaching them that stimulus =food time.

But it accomplishes the same thing.

Regards
FML

Hehehe. FML reminds me of what it is like in my house! I have to keep the dry cat food in the closet because if I leave the bag in a standard cupboard or out where the kitties can reach it they will eat 8 lbs of food in a day. They have now learned that the sound of the closet = food and anytime I open any closet door they come running and then I have to give them something or they get angry and confused.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but whats wrong with just leaving a dish of food out for the cat and letting him decide when he wants to eat? We had a cat when i was a teenager, and thats all we did for his food. So far as i can tell, he never suffered for it, and lived to a ripe old age.

Of course, stepping on my head at 4 in the morning would have also earned him a swat.

Some cats are ok with that. Some (like mine) will eat themselves sick if it’s always there.

You might try feeding your cat regularly right before bed, rather than in the morning. That way, they’ll only be going crazy at nine at night, instead of four in the morning.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer here like there is with dogs. Dogs are easy. Dogs get fed at a very particular time- immediately after you do. They can learn this very well.

I said I HAD cats do that. They don’t do it now.

Oh yeah. My mum’s cat gets fed in the morning and the evening. He will show up like clockwork around feeding time and yell his head off until the Feeding Slaves do their job. Since he’s uber-shy and likes roaming the Welsh Hills I rarely see him otherwise, but on the rare occasions he is around and gets the impression that there is something tasty around (chicken! fish! marmite!) he communicates it well.

Dog - they’re gonna feed me soon! Ohboyohboyohboy! This is gonna be great! Food Soon!!! :smiley:

Cat - Those lazy sods are finally going to get around to feeding me soon. Would it kill them to get it ready half an hour early just ONCE?? :rolleyes: HELLOOOO!! SERVICE!?!?! :dubious: Am I going to have to put my ass in your face AGAIN?