What do you do with your cats at night?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

Seriously, are any of you cat owners out there getting an unbroken night’s sleep? I haven’t had a peaceful rest in ten years, barring the occasional hotel stay on vacation. I’ve been fighting an ongoing battle with this thing. No matter how he is sequestered, or even back in the old days when he was an outdoor cat, at some point after bedtime, he wants to be In. Or Out. And after that, he wants to be In. Out. In. Out. In. He’s killing me.

He has a brother, who gives us very little trouble. He has toys, a cat tree, laundry baskets, plenty of food and water and litter. He gets hollered at, ignored, squirted with water…it makes no difference.

I’ve even considered giving him up, but it’s not an option. Now I’m down to either giving him sleeping pills or hiring someone to sit up and mind him all night. How do the rest of you cope?

#2

You’re going to laugh, but it works for me:
Take a long piece of string and tie it to the ceiling fan. Turn it on (low) about an hour before bedtime. Cat wears himself out, you both get a good nights sleep.

#3

One cat I had spent the night snuggled in my arms. I miss that cat. The current cat sometimes ventures upstairs at night and can’t decide whether he wants to be under the covers or not and annoys me enough to ensure I’m thoroughly awake and then goes somewhere else.

It’s gotten cooler outside and I haven’t turned the furnace on yet, so the house is about 15 C right now. I put a cat-safe heating pad in the cat’s bed and now he seems to be very happy to spend most of his time staying warm there. Win!

#4

I’ve got a nocturnal cat too, so I feel your pain. Sounds like yours may have been a former stray (that was my cat’s history too). My husband can sleep through all the meowing, the cat walking around on top of him while he’s sleeping, chasing our other (mellow) cat all over the house in the wee hours, etc–but it always keeps me up.

So we installed a cat door, so he could let himself out when bored. For the most part this worked, however, I will caution you, that ours brought MICE into the house through the cat door. Most of the time they were dead, but he did bring one live mouse in to play with inside, then a possum let himself in one night. Hence, we no longer have a cat door.

The best solution for us was to get a fish tank and a hamster in a cage (we also have kids, so they like this too). Now the nocturnal cat spends his nights trying to figure out how to get the fish out of the tank or the hamster out of the cage. And I sleep like a baby :slight_smile:

If more pets are not an option, you might try Simply Sleep, which will knock you out for a good 8 hours, even with a rowdy cat in the house.

#5

Get a zoomba (the robot hoover thing). It will either spend all night running aftert it or away from it.

We had a cat flap at our old place and the cat could please itself.

Now we are 3 floors up and after having lost him for 21 days (we eventually got him at the old place) we are having to keep him indoors for 2 months and take him out on a lead till he knows the area.

get a pine cone or something and stuff it with catnip and he will chase it and polish the floor at the same time.

#6

I was going to suggest that, brainstall. My cat sleeps on my thigh at night. That’s because it’s a big soft **warm **place. I bet that if Dung Beetle gives her cat a heating pad bed, the cat will chill there.

#7

My cats sleep intermittently throughout the day and night. I’m aware that there are blocks of time when they are both awake while I’m asleep, but they play or clean themselves quietly.

#8

I’m not laughing, I’m taking everything under serious consideration! Thanks for all the suggestions so far.

#9

The SO used to have the same problem, back when I first moved in some 15 or so years ago.

In fact, I’d bet it was more than 10 years since she’d had a solid night’s sleep. I tried a few of the common recommendations, but like you, found nothing that worked.

Fuck that shit.

Cats are my pet of choice, don’t get me wrong. But I’m not letting the furry little bastards destroy my health and sanity because they’re spoiled brats.

The cats (I believe we had 5 at the time) started spending the night in the garage, which was on the other side of the house from the bedrooms. I’d round them up at bedtime, toss them in the garage, and lock the cat door. They threw fits for a while but eventually got over it.

After about a year or so of that, they started getting to sleep in the house occasionally. I can’t remember exactly why, I suspect laziness on my part.

As they proved themselves able to behave at night, the nights spent in slowly increased, until they were back to fulltime.

Every once in a while they’d forget, and start getting obnoxious again. A week or so of sleeping in the garage fixed 'em right up.

And the SO got so addicted to actually getting sleep, that she’s never again insisted on turning her cats into bratty little monsters.

So we’ve never had the same problem with the 4 we have now, even when they were indoor/outdoor cats. They may get into a few scuffles when settling in, but they behave themselves for the most part. Which is a good thing, because we don’t have a garage anymore. :stuck_out_tongue:

#10

I have two new kitties, and we are going through the fight redtail describes. Kitties are slowly learning that if they are quiet and snuggle, not only do they get to sleep with me, but the bedroom door is open all night long, and they may wander at will.

However, if they yell, run, pounce, play, or otherwise make noise, they are pitched out of the bedroom, and the door is closed.

It’s been a month, and they’re finally starting to learn.

#11

I have a similar problem with one of my dogs. I have a tall bed and he has tendonitis and isn’t supposed to jump on or off. So I lift him onto the bed. He’ll sleep for an hour and then he’ll want to leave. He indicates this by climbing on top of me. I put him down, open the bedroom door, close the bedroom door and return to bed. Soon he decides he wants back in. So he scratches on the door. I get up, open the bedroom door, close the bedroom door, pick him up and put him back on the bed. Lather, rinse, repeat at least three or four times per night. He has been trained to be a very light sleeper.

#12

Could he use pet steps?

#13

I don’t do anything with my cat at night.

Well – I scritch his furry little head and tell him good night, but that’s it.

He generally does not even come upstairs to meow at me until about 7:00 a.m. to express his concerns about the empty bowl and the implications thereof, that there might be an eminent food shortage forthcoming. As soon as I get out of the shower, I thank my walking alarm clock with a fresh bowl of kitty fud.

He may have gotten into the habit of staying the hell out of my room at night because, for most of his life, there’s been at least one dog on the bed with me. And my dogs always like to lick that kitty. He’ll do his own licking, thankyouverymuch, so he sleeps wherever there aren’t any dogs.

#14

I have 3 cats and have unbroken sleep at night. They aren’t allowed outside, so they don’t beg to go out at night. They aren’t allowed on my bed either. The only 2 places in the house they aren’t allowed to be are on my bed and the kitchen counters. They sleep with my kids often (they don’t mind) or just on the couch or floor or chair. They occasionally fight or play, but usually they either sleep or just hang out with each other.

#15

If the cat kept waking me up he would be summariliy locked out of my bedroom and I would put on some white noise so I couldn’t hear him.

My two angels have very different nighttime schedules. My cat wants to be in the bedroom with me so I let her. She doesn’t whine to get out and usually sleeps when I am (on my pillow like a warm, furry, purring hat lulling me to sleep).

My husband’s cat is not allowed in the bedroom at night. She will poke at my cat until a fight breaks out and mew for scritches all night. My husband’s routine is to get up half an hour early in the morning and curl up with her so she gets some attention, too.

On the rare occasions that my cat is loud or bugging us, she gets thrown out and I turn up my white noise machine (because she will howl unless she has access to me).

#16

I put him in a box, where he may or may not be alive, but I won’t know until I open it.

#17

My 15 yo cat has never been allowed to sleep with my husband and I. We took him in as a stray at 8 months old. We had him sleep in the garage at night for the first few years. During cold weather, I provided a heating pad and cozy cushion for him, but still felt guilty.

Then, he needed to be a completely indoor cat, but still no bedroom sleeping. He has to go in our finished basement every night. That’s where his litter box is located. Thankfully, he is not a scratcher, so, though he will sometimes whine at the door, he doesn’t dig his claws into it. The few times that we let him upstairs during the night, he is up at 4am, climbing all over my head and chewing my hair. No manners at all!

OP, do you have a garage or room with a door that kitty can be confined to?

#18

My cat is quiet and well-behaved. She’s afraid of my husband so she hasn’t bothered me at night since he first moved in. Before that she’d sleep on my feet and I’d have to kick and squirm when I wanted to roll over.

#19

Get a long sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil. Here’s a coupon. Crumple it a bit and then place it on the floor in your bedroom doorway each night. He won’t step on it to come bug you.

You may have a few confused crinklings an meowings the first few nights, but eventually he’ll stop thinking of that as an option, and find somthing else destructive to do. :wink:

#20

Unless he’s like my cats. They LOVE playing with foil. Walking on it, scratching it, batting it around. It’s all good to them.

My two are pretty well-behaved (here’s one of them). I feed them at about 10 pm every night and never give them food in the morning so they don’t wake me up hoping to get food earlier. The usually sleep at the foot of my bed most of the night and start to rouse around 5-6 am. They screw around with each other, look out the window, benign stuff like that. They don’t bother me, though.