I find that yelling works wonders. Cats don’t like loud noises. When I first catch a cat doing something she shouldn’t do, I put on my most fearsome Klingon Warrior face and go “YAAAAARGH!” at them. Freaks the shit out of the cat, and they sprint away. After I’ve done that a few times, it’s enough for me to say, “Hey!” and put on the face, and they know to stop what they’re doing or face the yell.
You just have to not hold back when you yell. Move toward them rapidly, bare your teeth, raise your hands with fingers out like claws, and just make yourself as much of a parody of a Scary Motherfucker as you can.
This is quite effective. I use it when I see one of them where they know and have supposedly learned where they should not be, ie: on the cupboards. Or sometimes, I do it just for fun.
However, instead of "YAAAAAARGH"ing at them, I go for the Simpsons quote: “We’re big! We’re big!” All while standing on my tiptoes and with my hands as high over my head as I can get them. If they’re doing something bad, they know they’re in trouble. Catch them in just the right mood, however, and it dissolves into a big play chase which ends in tackles, non-hurtful nips, bunny-kicking, and ear scritches. Oh, well.
I started keeping Dewey in the dining and living rooms at night because he wakes up at 5 and thinks you should too. I have to keep two doors closed between us, though, so his yelling doesn’t wake me up.
In order to train a cat to a new routine it takes a lot of repetitions, like 9,999. So once you have taken the cats to the basement or pushed them off your delicate bits for the 10,000th time you should be set.
I was never allergic to cats when I was young, but I seem to have slowly developed allergies as I get older. A few years back I found the way to combat this is HEPA filters for the central air system and one of these bad boys in the bedroom.
The problem is that “waking up the people” is not a trainable item to the cats. I have taught my cat several things about nighttime:
[ul]
[li]Don’t walk on me (you’ll get thrown off the bed)[/li][li]Don’t howl or fight with the other cats (you’ll get removed from the room)[/li][li]Don’t stick your nose and the associated tickly whiskers in my eye socket in the middle of the night (the resulting scream will send you rocketing into the living room to hide under the couch for two hours)[/li][/ul]
The kitty understands these things, and modifies his behavior accordingly. However, when it got too warm last night and I kicked off all the covers, none of those trainable actions corresponded to “don’t lick my toes in the middle of the night.”
I’m surprised that no one’s told you about this: Cats are psychic, and know instantly if there’s something they’re not supposed to get their fur on or if someone doesn’t like them, so naturally, being overlords they immediately head over and attempt to get as much fur as possible on the fur free things or pester the crap out of people who don’t like them. That’s why they also prefer scratching the sides of your couch and not the 38 scratching posts you’ve bought them and carefully placed all around the house.
Tuckerfan, I buy the psychic cat theory. I had a friend come over that is allergic to cats. The one cat that is scared of EVERYTHING, especially strangers, just walked right up to him like she’s known him forever. If anyone comes over that actually wants to see her, she’ll hide until they leave.
On a good note, I did get a good night’s sleep last night. I just threw in some earplugs and ignored them. We’re going to try to just close the door at night and ignore their meows. Hopefully they’ll realize that meowing doesn’t help and they’ll stop doing it.
Apparently staring between cats is aggressive behaviour. So when you have a cat lover come to visit and seeks out the cat, the cat moves away. When some poor soul who doesn’t want to be anywhere near a kitty comes over, they avoid eye contact with the moggy who then thinks “Great, this new one is no threat to me…”
You can train them to use the scratching post rather than your settee by wrapping and old jumper of yours around the post for a few days, things need to smell right!
You may be able to get Art to settle down outside the bedroom by offering him a choice of jumpers to sleep on. Sometimes they go for a worn one, but often they prefer the ones that are clean and freshly folded. Try bunging a couple on the futon in the basement. Or give him a cardboard box, but don’t waste your money on a cat bed…
My cats now all sleep with the bedroom door closed on them, they don’t meow or scratch because they are sick of being ignored. It takes time, and being more stubborn than 4 cats is exhausting, but they do get the message!
Good luck!
Brewha, I had this exact same problem when I moved in with my fiance. I rigged up a control box with two buttons and mounted it to the bed. One of the buttons controlled a buzzer outside the bedroom door. The other was wired to a windshield washer pump with a hose aimed right at where a cat would stand to beat on the door, as her cat did. The idea was to warn him with the buzzer, then squirt him, in hopes that he would eventually be scared off by the buzzer. That sounded like a great idea at 9 in the morning when we thought of it; of course, when you’re being awakened at 3am you don’t have the same consideration for the cat’s feelings and we would always go straight for the water. He did try to adapt to it in various ways but in the end I won that fight.
Get one of those electronic dog fences to put around the bed, or to partition off the area the bed is in.
Since it is a larger cat the receiver might have to be fastened on to a harness rather than a collar. Maybe a cat model is available.
DCMShirley,
I love that idea. Did you use a 12V battery or a transformer to run the windshield washer pump? Don’t ask, but I do actually have a working windshield washer pump that has no other use. What did you use for a buzzer?
spingears,
I do like the idea, but since the cats are allowed in the bedroom at times I think it would confuse them. They should be able to learn that a closed door means that they should leave it alone, though.
I just wanted to second this. My fuzzy black land shark weighs 20 lbs. (or more, he hasn’t been weighed recently). While it annoys me to be walked on when I’m awake, I don’t notice it anymore when I’m asleep. I know he comes and goes, but I have gotten used to it. I think it’ll just take time for all of you to get used to each other.
Maybe if you cuddle with him while he’s on the bed, it will encourage him to stay in one spot near you, not on you, and reduce the number of times he goes on walkabout?
