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Cat Won't Shut Up
Didgeridoo
Flighty DameRegistered User regular
Flighty DameRegistered User regular
So I'm watching this cat for a friend of mine who is moving. The set-up is likely to last for three months or so. The cat is very sweet and pleasant, and loves to be pet and cuddled. So at the end of the night, I say goodnight to the kitty, go into my room, and shut the door.
That is when the torture begins.
"Meow? Meow? Meow? Meow? MEOW? Meow? MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW Meow?"
Again, she is a very nice cat, but this is not cool. Letting her sleep in the room with me is not an option, as I sleep in a loft bed and she can see every time I turn over and so she continues her chorus even louder.
Help me make this cat shut up, please
That is when the torture begins.
"Meow? Meow? Meow? Meow? MEOW? Meow? MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW Meow?"
Again, she is a very nice cat, but this is not cool. Letting her sleep in the room with me is not an option, as I sleep in a loft bed and she can see every time I turn over and so she continues her chorus even louder.
Help me make this cat shut up, please
Didgeridoo on
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but they're listening to every word I say
Getting a cat to change a behavior is as much fun for you as it is for them.
Honestly: Buy earplugs. Your best shot at changing the behavior is to ignore it and convince the little devil that it isn't an effective way to get your attention. The earplugs would be for the week or two it takes to make the point.
Also, cats tend to get pissed when they don't have free rein of the house. If you try the "close your door" method, it may leave you with an even more insistent kitty. Again, that is exactly what the earplugs are for.
Until then,
If I get out of bed to check him out he runs off to a different bedroom as if he wants me to follow, but if I ignore him he'll stop eventually. But what works and what doesn't is probably a case by case basis.
This. It may not, probably won't, shut 'em up completely, but it'll help. Cats do like attention. They get bored.
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I just lock him in the bathroom now, with his litterpan, food and water and he's fine.
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Doing that and also turning the light off helps.
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He will still wait for me to get up and be slightly annoyed that I took so long and therefore demand extra attention, but he got the message.
I have a fairly sensible kitty tho. Don't know if your friend's cat would get the hint.
Oh, and the reason she can't sleep in the loft bed with me is that it's pretty much a vertical climb to get up to my bed, and she wouldn't be able to get down if she got hungry, thirsty, or needed to use the bathroom.
Edit: and yes, she has plenty of food and water.
Our cats used to howl a lot when they were adopted. (They came from a litter of six and a very protective mom.) They've since calmed down, but they still howl when we come back from vacation.
If you have a room that's out of earshot of your bedroom, lock her in there for the night with food, water and litterbox. If you want, throw in a few toys and an old shirt or blanket (something with your scent on it). After a few days, give her free reign again. If she starts whining again, put her in the room. She'll eventually get the message.
You'd be surprised where cats can get to. I didn't know mine could leap directly from the floor to the top of the fridge, for example.
In one jump. :P
With this kitty, just remember that every time you open the door to try and chase her off, you're just rewarding her behavior with attention. The more you ignore, the faster they pick up that they're not getting anywhere.
Um, yeah. Unless the cat has arthritis or a broken hip, anywhere you can climb to he can climb to. In fact, a lot of places you wouldn't easily be able to jump or climb up to or off of a cat will be more than capable of accessing.
I don't know what the solution is though, unfortunately. I had this same problem when we agreed to look after my sister's cat when she went on holiday. We figured it would be easier to just have him stay with us rather than stopping by each day to feed him. Kept us awake all night and no matter how much attention we gave him he kept miaowing non stop. Eventually we just took him back to my sisters flat and I stopped by every day to clean out his litter, feed him and give him a bit of company for half an hour. Better that than being driven insane.
I hear she loans him out to overseas internment camps now. They put a POW in a room with him for a night, separated by a wire mesh fence. By morning they confess to any charges presented to them before clawing their own eyes out and garroting themselves with their own tongue. It's really sped up processing of prisoners.
I guess the only solution if you can't bear it any more is to discuss having a cattery look after him for the duration of the move.
Barring of course the aforementioned arthritis, etc.
Also, feed it earlier. My cat is always really hyper for a few hours after she gets her treat.
Yeah, eight feet is no big thing, but you can just get a cheap strip of carpet from home depot for cheap if you want. They usually sell 3ft wide 8ft long sections for almost nothing. Punch a pair of holes in it and use some zip-ties and just hang it off the foot of the bed, the cat will have no problem whatsoever getting up or down.
Edit: or you can get a platformed cat-tree on semi-equal height and the cat will probably just sleep on it near you. It probably just hates being alone.
Especially if it's a she. She may be in heat. Is the cat fixed?
You could always try tiring her out during the day so she'll sleep at night. Just poke and annoy her to keep her from sleeping during the day too much. We did this while we were waiting for ours to have the operation.
I didn't even think to ask that, this is true of all cats I've ever had. Until they're fixed they really really want to make noise, even when not in heat.
Some cats just love meowing when you're asleep, but the non-stop meowing is often a "hello! Hello!!!" type of meow. If you take two cats and separate them, within a short amount of time they'll start meowing for each other because they're looking for the other cat. The same is true for a cat that's used to being around people and is suddenly alone.
If you're cool with the cat sleeping in your bed, then the easy option is to leave the door open. If you're not, that's cool, you'll just have to put the cat in a room at least 2 doors away and make sure it's got some comfy stuff.
We've got one cat that likes to meow at 4-5am because he wants us to play with him. If one of us gets out of bed (I usually just get up and go to the bathroom, since he's woken me up), he purrs like crazy and is super happy that one of us got out of bed. And then he follows me back into the bedroom and is quiet again. It's not every night, and so some days (when we want a nice long sleep), we'll play with him a lot to tire him out.
my cat waits for me to get into bed then walks all over my face
To the OP: Wear the cat out before you go to bed. The laser pointer is the best idea, followed by some good belly rubbins' once he's worn out and wont chase anymore. If you play play play play with the cat and then go to bed and fucking ignore it, eventually the cat may learn "about now is playtime and then it's quiet time and I get ignored." It might work, it might not. At the very least, it may shut up long enough for you to fall asleep and ignore it the rest of the night.
DO NOT under any circumstances acknowledge the cat's existence once you have gone to bed. Cats learn how to get what they want almost instantly. Teaching them to give you what you want, way different story.
If you don't mind it sleeping with you, problem solved. If your bed is 8 feet tall, put something 4 feet tall next to it. The cat will have no problems whatsoever making those jumps.
My friend just sent me this page and I had to sign up and reply.
We are watching our friends cat. we started 2 weeks ago. My friend, different from the referrer, lives in the second room of our 2 BR apartment. me and my woman live in the master br. Our cat follows us around and goes "MROW" until you talk back.
She is quiet at night. then at 5 in the morning, my friend's alarm goes off. he hits snooze. does this for an hour or 2. She has now recognized when this is gonna happen and waits at his door and meows 10 minutes before his alarm goes off. then sits on her side and gallops on the door. it's awesome.
all last year when I lived with him, he started doing this 5 in the morning alarm crap. and I hated it. I talked to him about it, he didn't change. so I bought ear plugs and a fan to drown out the noise. pay back.
Anyways. Training was going fine, we weren't acknowledging her at all. I think it was either this morning or yesterday that he started charging at her to scare her off. Doesn't this ruin the training?
anytime i hear her, I just turn on the fan. works pretty well. If the cat can't hear you moving around, she won't meow.
What
If this means what I think it means (leaping out of bed, throwing the door open, chasing the cat/scaring the piss out of it) tell your friend to stop being a fucking dick to the cat. This is a terrible way to teach cats anything other than "humans are scary, I need to run from them and stop loving them".
Jesus.
Are you kidding? If cats had opposable thumbs I'm pretty sure I'd be renting a room from my cat.
The real problem is that cats are smart enough to figure out (sometimes very quickly) human behavior patterns. When your roommate's alarm goes off at 5:00am, the cat just hears "someone to feed and play with me! yay!"
Exactly. Tell him to set his goddamn alarm for when he actually wants to get up. And if he chases the cat again, squirt him with a squirt bottle.
I used to feed him in the morning, and all that ended up happening was him waking me up at 6AM on the weekends and me being grumpy.
The logic will fail.
I told him that last year. the alarm thing. some people just don't know how to get up right away.