My cats are adorable. I love them, really I do. But they are absolute nutballs in the morning and it makes me want to scream in frustration and terror.
At about 5:30 they start tearing around the apartment as though they are being chased by an angry rhinocerous. After about 20 minutes of this, they then decide they are hungry and start to mew. When I don’t respond to the mewing (I have been trying to train them that all the noise is not going to make me get out of bed and feed them, but as soon as they realize I am awake they won’t stop despite the fact that they still don’t get fed until the alarm clock goes off) they either climb up on the night stand and start knocking things on the floor one at a time or they find a piece of paper or a plastic bag and haul it into a corner and shake it vigorously until the rattling noise is so annoying that lobbing pillows at them seems like the best possible option.
I had been feeding them right before bed at night but this caused them to run amok for 20 or 30 minutes when I was trying to fall asleep. Now I feed them earlier but it causes their nutball behavior to kick in when I should be sleeping for another hour and a half. I can’t leave them with an automatic feeder because then they will never stop eating and end up having to roll themselves from place to place. My next thought is getting a squirt gun, but that would have to sit on the night stand and it will be the first thing to crash to the floor in their quest to make enough noise to wake me up.
I know, many of you are wondering why I don’t just kick them out of the bedroom and close the door, right? Three months from now when I move into a new place I will do that, but right now my bedroom doesn’t have doors, it has sliding curtians that present no real challenge to kitties who want to be in the bedroom with me.
Is it possible to make them be quiet in the morning without over feeding them?
When Chica does her racing around thing, I call it “Ninja-mode” and just deal with it. She does it almost every night when I’m finally ready to fall asleep. One moment she’ll be contentedly purring - the next - she’s off! She banged into the wall one night, got up, and walked away slowly like, “I meant to do that”.
I don’t have any advice - Chica pretty much runs things at my place.
sorry to threadjack Hey Jali - is Chica your little Siamese? Post some new pics!
I don’t have any great advice how to keep the kitties quiet in the morning without a door. Maybe play with them really hard before bed in an attempt to exhaust them. Can you put them in some kind of room for time out? Bathroom, maybe? Or feed them before bed and then plan to be up for the 20 minutes when they are running amok, get a laser point or a feather on a pole and let them get it all out of their system.
Not having a bedroom door does present a challenge.
I think you’ll have to put away any bags/papers/small objects they could use to annoy you in the morning. Absolutely do not reward their noisemaking with food - it will only encourage them to keep doing it because they know you’ll give in eventually.
I can’t see the pictures because FB is blocked at my work - are they still kittens? Hopefully they will mellow out in time. Exhausting them before bedtime is a good suggestion.
Could you get the automatic feeder type of bowl for the overnights only, and then put it up in a cupboard during the day?
In my own cat, I counter his urge to have the household wake up at 5:30 AM by feeding him as late as I can, and then having him run around chasing the laser pointer until he is tuckered out enough to sleep through the night.
Yeah, Joey and Oliver run things here too. It wouldn’t be so bad, but when I say loud I mean LOUD, as in knocking over living room furniture (tables, giant chairs, etc.) in their attempts to escape whatever invisible fiends are after them. They are about 4 1/2 so they don’t do this often, just once or twice a day for about 20 minutes.
I am just counting down the days until I am in my new place with my bedroom door.
Instead of a squirt gun, I prefer a can of compressed air. Yeah, a bit more expensive, but nothing gets all wet.
How about an alarm clock that plays bird noises or similar. Placed in a room the farthest away from you (so it doesn’t wake you). Cover it with blankets or something so they have to snoop around for it. Set it for 5 am or so. Move it before bed every night so it isn’t always in the same place. Put some cat toys around it. The noise might draw them in, then the toys could distract them.
Cats like to free-feed. Any cat I’ve known that wasn’t allowed to do so developed this sort of behavior in order to get food, even if there’s no immediate reward stimulus.
For the time being you could try crating them at night. They’ve been fed and they might just curl up and sleep like kitties do. If you don’t have room for a large crate (that could accomodate 2 cats + litter box) you could try shutting them in the bathroom overnight.
My cats go crazy during the night. And the wee hours of the morning. Dawn sets them off too. But we have a bedroom door that helps muffle the romping a bit. However, it does nothing when Shoogie yowls outside the bedroom door. God, if he wasn’t a neutered male, I’d swear he was a Queen in heat.
I call it FRAP- Frenetic Random Activity Period. My two cats start to FRAP around 5 a.m. They have food available all the time, so I don’t think it’s food related- I think they’re just warming up for a long day of eating, napping, and torturing the dog. Apparently, this requires attacking my feet under the covers, galloping through the bedroom (BUCKITYBUCKITYBUCKITYBUCKTY), and having World Kitty Wrestling matches on my stomach.
I just live with it. It’s a small price to pay for The Cute.
I’ve tried to let them free feed, but the gorge themselves until they vomit. They will eat a month’s worth of food in a matter of days. Ask me how I know this and how hard it is to clean gallons of cat vomit out of the rug. Beyond that, they are on very specific wet food diets (Joey is on a special food for urinary tract health) so free feeding isn’t really an option.
I think it is probably just normal kitty behavior and I will just have to exhaust them and then feed them about an hour before bed. When I have a bedroom door hopefully it will be much easier.
I couldn’t figure out why my cat was getting cleaner when it dawned on me that she used to deliberately lick real loud to get my attention. It was comical how loud she would do this verus her normal routine. It’s amazing she had any fur left.
Before you said this, I was going to suggest an automatic feeder like this. It opens a compartment at the appointed time, so the cats aren’t overeating, but it’s easier to set a midday feeding time. But that won’t really work with wet food.
My brother has an auto feeder that he loves… and his cat hates. My sister-in-law says the cat has become obsessed with the thing and sits at it, waiting for it to dispense more food. Yep, he’s just as neurotic as my brother.
They make an automatic feeder for wet food; there’s a cold pack that goes in there. They advertise as something that you could use to feed your cat wet food if you’re gone three days, but that’s ridiculous. (Trust me.) But overnight it should work – fill it before you go to bed, and within a week they’ll figure out that it magically pops open in the morning.
This. I used to have a cat who would gorge herself if you left food out, so I had to ration her food, but if you put out the whole day’s worth of food, she’d make herself sick. So I eventually went to an automatic feeder. Best part: starting at about 4am, she’d stop sitting at the head of my bed staring at me and willing me to wake up; she’d instead go sit by the feeder and stare at it willing it to open.
Otherwise, can’t help you. Mine don’t really run around in the morning; they tend to do that at night but well before bed time.
One of my cats does this. Just this morning she systematically pushed everything off my bedstand, item by item. And she can’t just whack stuff onto the floor and be done with it - she has to bat everything delicately around on the surface for a while, as I lay there wondering if I am awake enough to take a look and make sure I didn’t leave a glass of water there for her to push over.
My cats are ad lib fed, so hunger is not an issue. It’s perversity, sheer perversity.
If I remember, I preemptively put everything into a drawer/on the floor before I go to sleep, in order to ruin her diabolical little game of Bat The Owner’s Nightstand Stuff Onto The Floor. Sounds like you need to do this, and also have to make sure there are no crinkly bags or other fun stuff within reach in your bedroom as well.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…A door? You think having *A DOOR *is going to stop the insanity? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I have TWO… count 'em TWO doors to my bedroom, one on either side… If I have the audacity to close both of them tightly to lock the cats out, they batter themselves against said door until I open it a cat sized crack.
Good luck with that.
For what it’s worth, I free-feed dry food and they each get just a quarter of a can of wet food in the morning… after I have the coffee brewing. They know the routine, and other than sitting on the counter staring at me with their best hurry up-hurry up-*hurry UP *faces, it works.
Beyond that, they are on very specific wet food diets (Joey is on a special food for urinary tract health) so free feeding isn’t really an option.