I'm so tired, or My Cat is Driving me NUTS!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I know we have a huge number of cat owners on the board, so I thought I’d post my latest troubles and hope for some good advice. Plus it will make me feel better to complain to someone other than my finace.

First some background: I love my kitties, but they are usually not allowed in the bedroom at night (I know, inconsistency is bad). I tried letting them in, but about 2am they would start playing and I got tired of being jumped on and scratched to death from their running across the bed, not to mention being woke up by them. So, I started shutting them out at night. We have a townhome, so there’s plenty of room for them to play downstairs, plus that’s where all their food/water/litterboxes are.

For the past two months, starting about 5-6 am my lil girl will start meowing as she paces up and down the stairway. Not just a meow every now and then, but constant noise. I usually get up to go to work around 5:30, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I just had to wake up a little earlier some days. Now the weekends were a different story, but I won’t go in to that. I’ll just say I’ve gotten used to taking naps on Saturday and Sunday now.

For the past 2 weeks, she has started doing this all night. From the time we go to bed until the time I finally get up for the day. She might take a break for an hour or so, but then she’s back. I don’t know what’s wrong with her! I go and check the food and water, they are fine. The litterbox is clean. We play with them and pet them before bed. I don’t understand!!!

She will meow like that when everyone leaves a room or she finds herself up or downstairs alone. She has always been very vocal but seems to be getting more so as she gets older. We also have her brother, but he isn’t like that at all. They are still not a year old, but I don’t know if age has anything to do with it.

This is actually getting to be a pretty serious thing now. It was bothersome before when it was just the morning, but this all night thing is keeping me from sleeping. I was so tired at work yesterday I didn’t think I could make it all day.

Ugh. I’m tired today. Anyone else had these type of problems? Any advice on what to do??? I can’t get rid of my babies, but I don’t know what to do about my sweet Bella.

2

Is she fixed?

If so, it may be time to resort to the water pistol.

3

do you have a basement? or a room, that you can lock her in with, and make into a veritable kitty palace.

Thats what we do with our little siamese kitten. Since the day we got her, she knows at night she has to go to her room. Then we let her out and she usually climbs the walls for a little bit (long story) then she has free reign. which is usually on my mouse pad . :slight_smile:

we also have a white noise machine which drowns out ANY noise from out side our bedroom.

4

Finagle
Yes, she is fixed. The shelter had already taken care of that when we got her. And the water doesn’t work. I’ve tried that already.

Phlosphr
Unfortunately, our place is a small 1-bedroom townhome. The only room with a door that is not our bedroom or in our bedroom is the downstairs half-bath. It is way too tiny to try anything like that. I thought about looking in to one of those “kitty play pen” type things or a dog crate, but I really hate to have to lock them up at night. I wouldn’t sleep then for worrying about them the whole night.

5

The last resort has a name. And it’s called The Super Soaker

6

Classic conditioning works. If you get up everynight and squirt her, she’ll get the picture after a couple days. Especially if you squirt her everytime she cries.

7

My cousin Rick had a cat that suddenly started staying up all night, howling or whatever. They’d had the cat for many years before he started doing this, and there seemed to be no physical problems with the cat. So one day Rick was off work, and tried an experiment. He kept tabs on the cat all day, and whenever the cat tried to take a nap, Rick would play with or otherwise annoy him to keep him awake. By early evening the cat was dead to the world and everyone got a good nights sleep that night. After that, the cat stopped its strange nocturnal behavior. Sure, it could have been a coincidence, but you never know.

Good luck with whatever approach you take!

8

Kitties kitties kitties! :slight_smile: I wish I had a floofy kitty right here right now to sit on my desk and play with paper clips and meow and purr. :slight_smile:

Have you tried letting only the meowy kitty sleep in your room? And shutting the others out? Then they wouldn’t play and the meowy kitty wouldn’t be lonely. :slight_smile:

9

Qazzz…
You are so funny! And no, we haven’t tried that yet, but that’s my next plan of action. I think Bandit will be sad to be locked out by himself, but he’s not as clingy as Bella so I think he will be okay. I guess this weekend I will try to make another kitty area upstairs so my little princess will have all the comforts of downstairs at night.

PaperBlob…
Great suggestion. I should be home all day on Monday. Watch out kitty! :slight_smile:

Phlosphr…
I’ve actually tried spraying her with water for a while now. It seems to have worked with every other problem we’ve had with the cats except for this one.

10

When I got my cat, he was about half a year old. At first I tried shutting him out of the bedroom for the night, but it turned out he knew how to open doors… and if I locked it, he´d jump against the door half the night meowing like someone was trying to kill him. So he was allowed in the bedroom.
Yup, he´d wake up in the middle of the night and start tearing across the bed and rustling about in the waste paper basket, but I got myself some ear plugs and that was it. He´s now six years old and he´s been letting me sleep without the ear plugs for at least four years - he just cuddles up beside me and sleeps all night, and if I don´t sleep at home I really miss him.

So maybe it´s an age thing, and your cat will calm down after a while. But then again, my cat is fairly calm and cuddly anyway.
The only other option is to never ever let her sleep in your room and get yourself some ear plugs. I hope she´ll get used to it eventually, and anyway, she´s got the other cat for company.

11

[hijack]

Phlosphr, you’re just grabbing at ANY excuse to post the picture of the Cutest Kitten In The Universe, aren’t you??? (Not that I blame you. She really IS!)

[end hijack]

12

I had this same problem when I got my cat. For awhile, I kept her in the utility room at night with toys, litterbox, food, water, etc. As she got bigger, though, I decided to let her roam free during the night, but NOT in my room. I too have a lot of trouble with animals playing around me when I’m trying to sleep. She was meowing at the door every night, and it HAD to stop. So what did I do?

Cats hate vacuum cleaners. I’ve never met one that wasn’t scared of them. I’d plug the vacuum in beside my bed into a surge protector, and make sure the switch on the vacuum was on the on position, and the switch on the surge protector was off. When she meowed at my door during the night, I’d very quietly lean over, switch the surge protector on, and let the roaring vacuum scare her away. I did this for about three or four months, although I didn’t have to actually use it after the first. The presence of it was reinforcement. It worked like a charm. She doesn’t even bother me in our new house, so the behavior modification carried over to a new location. I think it’s worth a try.

13

I have two kitties, and they have done the same thing before (although I must admit, they haven’t since we moved to a new place). Ours included such auditory delights as batting the venetian blinds, batting anything that made noise, pushing doors open and closed, and knocking things off tables. Here’s what I learned:

Kitties are creatures of habit. Once they get into a habit of being meowy and obnoxious at a certain time of day, they just keep on going in that habit until, and this is key, something disrupts that habit. It could be that you take a vacation (or, if they have good behavior habits, you return from one). It could be that you drastically change their feeding time. It could be that you introduce something totally new into their daily experience: get harnesses (or not) and take them outside, or give them a whole catnip plant to destroy, or run them ragged with a laser pointer, or, if you have access to an attic or crawlspace, let them get in there to explore. Whatever.

The point is, your kitty has formed a bad habit, and it’s up to you to break it, and my experiece taught me that to break a cat-habit, you need to break a significant chuck of the kitty’s routine. Shake up her world a little for a few days, and she should quit.

14

Let me echo the water pistol sentiment already expressed here…it works. You can’t hit a cat without causing major problems, but you can annoy the hell out of them by a quick squirt from the water pistol. You’ll probably need to do it a few dozen times before it REALLY sinks in, but that technique is the only one that has ever worked for cat discipline problems for me.

15

All of you exponents of the water pistol: it didn’t work for my cat. She’s neurotic, high-strung, hyper-active and pretty damned stupid (not that I don’t love her, but she’s really dumb. We’re talking about a cat who once jumped into a 450 degree oven). She HATED getting squirted (I kept up the squirting for MONTHS), but in her tiny little brain I don’t think she ever connected getting squirted with whatever she was doing. She did develop a Pavlovian response to the squirt bottle, and now whenever she sees a spray bottle of any kind (including glass cleaner when I’m cleaning my apartment) she squinches up her eyes and flinches. But she doesn’t stop whatever she’s doing.

Kyan: I had the same problem with my other cat (who is just as stupid as the first cat, but much sweeter-natured). There were weeks and weeks of no sleep. One night in desperation I gave her a cc of rum (I’d had my pharmacist boyfriend work out how much would be safe to give her, according to body weight). Worked like a charm. Knocked her right out. But then I felt guilty about having drugged my cat, and I didn’t want her to get addicted so that I would have to support my cat’s rum habit, and we were back to square one. She quit after a few months. Meanwhile, I took lots of naps (during which she’d usually snuggle up next to me and be as sweet as she could be).

16

/agree October

The spray bottle didn’t work on my kitty either. And she’s not neurotic, high-strung, hyperactive and pretty damned stupid. So we don’t, alas, have a common denominator between October’s cat and mine.

What did work was changing the bedroom furniture. I know that sounds odd but what she liked to do was sort of lay on her side and chase her tail around the legs of my credenza, chair and dresser. That made lots of loud random noises which prevented me from sleeping.

Once I moved in with the future Mr. Contrary, we used his bedroom furniture (put mine in the guest room which stays shut). Well she is small but she’s not small enough to twirl herself around his furniture!

Problem solved.

17

Please keep the suggestions coming guys! I knew I could count on you. :slight_smile: I’m making a list to start trying!

The spray bottle is out though. I will spray the whole thing at her and it won’t matter. It’s a deterrent for some things, but not this one.

I wish they both would just sleep at night. I would love to have them all cuddled up with me. They do it during the day if I take a nap and I love it! We went and bought some new toys last night, so I’m going to try playing until they are exhausted. I really hope they will be better once they get old and fat. :slight_smile:

18

Do you have a laser pointer? This, I have found, is the best cat toy EVER. You can get them for around $8 at PetCo ™. As cat toys go, it’s a little expensive, but well worth it, since it provides hours of entertainment for the sadistic owner. I think it causes a short circuit in their brains and they simply go berserk. They just don’t understand why they can’t catch that damned little red thing zooming all over the place. Best toy for wearing out the neurotic hyperactive high-strung stupid cat I’ve found.

19

**I have had many kitties in my lifetime and I know that they all have their little idiosyncracies. **
First of all, is she spade? If so, there are some females that are frustrated and also cannot handle being alone, cats (especially females), do better when there are more than one.
And having a male cat there is not the same.
Then also, there are some females, that just get vocal as they age. There are many reasons whey she is doing this.
This is the lot of a cat owner. :rolleyes:

20

whiterrabbit - yep…I’m pretty proud of her.

I never thought I’d say that.