Cat waking me up

Rye

No pictures in this thread - this cat is evil anyway (not really.. just pushy).

So, my girlfriend and I have 2 cats. We stopped leaving food out because they kept overeating and we don't want to have kitty diabetus to be an issue. So, I feed them when I wake up (always up early for work) and she tries to feed them around when I get home.

Now, one of the cats is VERY pushy about getting fed. In the mornings he comes into the room around 4Am (3 hours before I wake normally) and does his routine to get me to feed him. He will sit on my stomach and for the most part poke me in any vulnerable area until I wake up and feed him. If I roll over, he walks up and down my back. Believe me, this cat knows what he's doing.

This is unavoidable, it seems: We can't close the door as he will scratch the living hell out of it (keeping us awake and throwing away our pet deposit.)

I've tried lightly smacking him on the noggin, or just plain throwing him off of me, but that makes even more noise for my GF sleeping, and he just runs around and jumps back on the bed.

We got a new comforter, so I'm not amenable to any sort of spray-bottle action at all. I'm more likely to spray my GF with how groggy I am.

So, now you have the rules of the puzzle - can anyone help us find a solution? Usually, my girl has all the answers with cats. This one's a mystery. Please halp! Need sleeep.

Infidel

This is why my roommate doesn't feed his cats in the morning.

The best option for him was to not feed them when they'd hassle him while sleeping, because they are much less of shitheads during the afternoon or evening.

If you're not leaving food out I think the solution is don't feed them in the mornings, change it up.

Rye

So, just suck it up for a few nights? Or are we talking MONTHS of breaking this habit? How long will it take? this cat is really stubborn.

EDIT: My GF will be employed any time now (fingers crossed), so mid afternoon feeding isn't as likely. Is it bad to feed them once a day? They kind of devour whatever's put in front of them at this point, and they've thrown up when we put way too much food down at once.

admanb

Do you have anything you can use to stop it from scratching on the door? Something that will absorb both the sound and the damage, presumably.

Cats do fine on one feeding per day. Predators tend to work that way, in general.

Infidel

Rye wrote: »

So, just suck it up for a few nights? Or are we talking MONTHS of breaking this habit? How long will it take? this cat is really stubborn.

EDIT: My GF will be employed any time now (fingers crossed), so mid afternoon feeding isn't as likely. Is it bad to feed them once a day? They kind of devour whatever's put in front of them at this point, and they've thrown up when we put way too much food down at once.

I don't think it took very long at all, like a week maybe? They seem to know when dinner time is, if you change it up they'll get the idea and just bug you then.

If one meal for the day is too much (binge and purge) then you could portion it out in halves over the evening?

Figgy

What are you feeding them? Soft or dry?

I feed my cat dry food as a staple with tiny, tiny portions of wet food every so often. The dry food, she will eat at her leisure (only a few bites every so often throughout the day), but she will eat as much wet food as we put out, so that we have to be careful of.

If you leave dry food out at all times, will your cats eat it all and puke?

Rye

Yes, they will gorge themselves on dry food and puke.

We discovered this when we left for 2 days to visit my sister. We came back, all the food we left out was gone, ahole had been clawed into the bag of food, and puke was hidden all around.

Figgy

.... but that's because they got into the bag of food as well.

What would happen if you just leave a full bowl out and then... put the bag in the cupboard?

Another solution would be to get one of those automatic feeders. The cat will learn fairly quickly that food comes out on its own, and you no longer are the one who provides it. It will have food coming out in small amounts throughout the day, so it won't gorge and puke!

Edit: Holy fuck! I have found your perfect answer!

The Cat Powered Automatic Cat Feeder!

Problem: Yoshi was gorging himself on cat food from his gravity-powered feeder, gaining a lot of weight even on weight-loss formula food, and even vomiting from overconsumption (yeuagh).

Solution: An automatic feeder that takes 5 minutes to make, and requires no soldering, no motors, and no batteries. Your cat's own clever paws knock just a few pellets out at a time, so this dispenser is self-regulating according to a simple algorithm: while your cat's hunger exceeds his laziness, he shakes the feeder, eats the pellets, repeats.

You can make it yourself!

SkyCaptain

Roll over and enjoy the free massage?

Mustang

I have a cat that wants me to open up the sliding door for him to look outside at 4-5 am every morning. I find it's easier to just get up straight away, do the door thing and then go back to bed, than lie in bed with him nagging the shit out of me for hours until I do it anyway.

zilo

Close the door, leave a desk fan outside it to keep them from scratching. Works great on our cats.

Mustang

Actually that's a pretty good idea.

Conroy Bumpas

i had the exact same problem. 4am every day itd stick a claw in my lip. (sorry for my spelling im very dislexic)


a combonation of things helped me.


1 was break its routine. i went away for a friday and a saterday night. i came back during the day and fed him ect. this seemed to change his sleeping pattern abit after that. (i kept him awake all day playing with him)


the other was a battle of will. i bought 2 havy duty door mats. and stuck them where he scraches teh door and carpet. and just keept him out. the persistent little git started head butting the door to get me up. and then lerned to cry like a baby witch made my mrs get up. (he defnatly wasnt hert it was an evil trick) but after a few nights locked out of our bedroom and the mats protecting the house. he gave up.

no occasionly he wakes me up 7ish.



another thing i have herd of is people buying those timed cat feeders and setting them for 4am so the cat knows its nothing to do with you when the food comes. and you just change his feeding times acordingly so you dont over feed it

ashridah

I've been through this pain recently as well with one of our cats. He'll sit on me at 4-5am, purring, nudging at my hands with his cold nose, and jumping back on whenever i pushed him off.

However, i found refusing to get up, and feeding them later in the evening helped rotate the schedule. Now he shows up at 7am instead of 4am. Either that or i'm able to sleep through it better, i'm not sure :P

BEAST!

Oddly enough mine has started doing this at 4:30am, two hours earlier than normal. I have a feeling it's also because I'm feeding him less because I realized that he was getting fat when allowed to graze.

I MAY try the once a day feeding thing but that nudge cat feeder seems pretty nice although I do wonder how well it would work on my hardwood floors. He'll probably end up in the bedroom with it by the time he's done eating.

Lovely

So.... do you feed them as SOON as you get out of bed? Doing that may be sending your cat a bad message that wake up= immediate food.

If thats the case, you might try waking up a little earlier and going on the computer or doing something for a while (30 minutes or so), before you feed them.