My cat is quite insistent on making sure I stick to a schedule. If he were a dog that had regular feedings in the mornings, I could understand. But, no, he free-feeds and has never been on a schedule, and I fill up his bowl every couple of days. If anything, when I briefly fed him a little canned cat food, I fed him in the afternoons rather than the mornings. My friend has the same problem with his cats.
So, why do cats like to make sure their owners stay on a schedule?
(Funny thing–I recently moved to a different time zone and for a while he was waking me up at 6:00 AM, Old Time Zone. So he doesn’t wake me up by the sun. How the heck do animals measure time and why did Homo sapiens miss out on having an internal clock?)
One of our cats, when she wakes up she wants attention. Same thing, she is free fed and there are no treats associated with the morning, only evening. My husband is her “hunting buddy” and when she wakes up (5-ish) to start patrol, she wants him by her side. She will knock things over, scratch at doors, cause all kinds of trouble if he decides he wants to sleep in.
Some humans have an internal clock. As long as I’m generally well-rested (granted, that doesn’t happen a lot), I find myself waking up at the same time every day, even if I went to bed a little late or early.
Yeah, I guess attention is a good reason as any. He’s quite the whore. My other cat has never woken me up, and she’s never begged for attention either.
MidnightRadio–dittos. It just seems that animals have an instinctive knowledge of what time it is, whereas our clock seems to work only in the subconcious.
My kitty-kitty generally wakes me up between 4:30 and 5. I keep her in the living room while I sleep because she tends to want to sleep on my face.
The cat will actually HOWL, scratch the door, put her paws under the door, ect. to wake me up. If that dosen’t work, the slut will find a hard toy, navigate it over to my bedroom door, and start playing! Banging it against the door of course.
About that time I just open the door, stagger back to bed, and let kitty sleep with me.
My cats complain if I stay up too late. Around midnight they will start poking around. One will sometimes want to cuddle up (which is so adorable I will end up staying up even later so as not to disturb her); the other will just yell at me until I turn off the computer and go to bed. They don’t seem to mind if we sleep late, though.