So my dear Matilda, a lovely and intelligent little kitty, is also a pain in my ass. She likes to go into my room and wake me up too early by knocking things off of my nightstand or turning on my sleeping computer if I don’t pet her or show some indication that I’m getting up to feed her.
If I try to catch her and get her out, she runs away into my room and hides. If I do manage to get her out and close it, she will somehow pop it back open. Even putting weights behind it or a baby gate in front will not defeat her. Advice? I like sleeping.
If she’s hungry, you could try to use an automatic feeder and schedule it to dispense food before you get up in the hopes that will keep her placated.
This kind of thing is why we keep our cats secure in their own room at night and only let them out in the morning. But that may not work well for Matilda if she didn’t grow up in that situation. (We’ve done that since ours were kittens and they’re cool with it).
I am assuming you can’t lock your bedroom door at the moment. Could you replace the knob with one that locks? One presumes even the smartest cat can’t unlock a locked door.
Sounds like your bedroom door won’t latch properly? A hook-and-eye lock could fix that pretty quick. I bet your cat would rattle the door, though. Mine used to hook his paws under the bottom and just shake it as hard as he could. He really put his back into it.
Seriously, I feel your pain! I just found a similar thread I started on the topic long ago. I’ll have to go back and read it in a moment to see how it all turned out. What do you do with your cats at night? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
But what I remember is that my cat remained a terrible pain in my ass for years until we moved out to the country and got a house with a cat door.
I don’t let my cat sleep with me at night and wear earplugs. Problem solved . Well, unless cat does something like pee on the rug in retaliation. In which case, they win.
But seriously I’ve had cats I can sleep with and those I can’t because they will wake me up multiple times at night. The current one is a can’t (except in the daytime for a short nap), so I don’t. Works for me.
The locks are a good idea-all I can hear is her scratching on the carpet under the door and then it opens. I don’t think it has a lock. Her brother likes to come in and sleep with me too, but he’s not nearly as troublesome.
What’s the best way to post a picture? I have too many.
I upload pictures to Flickr, then share the link. If you put the link on a line by itself, the picture will show in the thread without people having to click on it.
Step one: leave some kibble available to her overnight, so if she’s really hungry she can eat that.
Step two, which would have been easier if you’d started doing it the first day she lived with you: do not, repeat do not, ever get up earlier than you would have gotten up anyway. No matter what she’s doing. That is, you can get up to pee if you have to – but if you do have to get out of bed early for some reason, Do Not Feed The Cat; or do anything else more amusing to her than a fast ear-rub. If she persists, hold her firmly, sharp side away from you, and pretend to fall asleep in that position, still pinning her down. You can let her squirm loose, but don’t make it too easy.
Sounds similar to the advice for baby humans that wake in the night - Be Boring
Pick them up and comfort them, but do as little as possible. No extra light or TV or cartoons on the laptop. The idea is that they get bored and fall asleep, and at least with our two, it works.
We do; the annoying feed-me behaviour starts up to an hour and a half before dinnertime. In the morning, they just wait for us to get up, but they have no expectation of food.
Cats naturally eat multiple small meals, not one big one. If you want to feed them only once daily, make some of the food kibble, and put enough of it down so they’ll have something there to eat until only a few hours before the next feeding.
My battle is with my cat scratching my furniture and being up on things I don’t want her on. Argh…what a battle. But I did find a solution. Double sided masking tape, $10 a roll.
Cats don’t like sticky surfaces. Tape the desk or counter she’s jumping onto, and she’ll stop. It has worked very well at our house, maybe you should try it?
The only issue with food-related solutions is that her brother is also in the house, and he’s a big bully who will eat her food too as well as monopolize anything else. She prefers to eat next to one of us so that we can shoo him away. He used to be the runt. Maybe feeding them later would work.
If I get up to use the bathroom, she just hides in my room-she doesn’t fall for the “fake exit then shut the door” gag anymore. And after I get back, she lurks and then begins her “pet me or else” game. Sometimes she sneaks in before I even go to bed the previous night!
Yes, I should have mentioned that our once-a-day was wet food. They have a food ball full of kibble that they can bat around for snax at other times of day.
