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Cat keeps yowling late at night
cj iwakura
The Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
The Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
Artemis is at it again.
Lately at random intervals in the middle of the night(usually 3-4 AM), he'll go out into the living room and just start yowling for no reason, loud as can be. (He's part Siamese, so this is VERY loud.)
The only thing that stops it is if I wake up and chase him out of there, or lock him in my room.
He's fixed, so I'm sure it's not heat or anything. He doesn't act sick at all, and he's always got food and water.
Any possible cause or solution?
Obligatory picture of the jerk:
Lately at random intervals in the middle of the night(usually 3-4 AM), he'll go out into the living room and just start yowling for no reason, loud as can be. (He's part Siamese, so this is VERY loud.)
The only thing that stops it is if I wake up and chase him out of there, or lock him in my room.
He's fixed, so I'm sure it's not heat or anything. He doesn't act sick at all, and he's always got food and water.
Any possible cause or solution?
Obligatory picture of the jerk:
cj iwakura on
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They do this with health related things.
Also sometimes because they're bored as fuck.
Sometimes right after. I used to think it was related, but it never happens when he uses it during the day, and he always shuts up when I go chase him out of there. I feel like he just wants attention.
Everyone was really upset, until the first morning after I did it. First good night's sleep for the whole family in months.
I guess what I'm saying is that I hope you sort out what the problem is and get him to stop it but, if you can't, don't hate yourself for needing to prioritize your own well-being. Sometimes the hard decision is the better one for all parties, including the pet.
That was never on the table. He could do it all night and day and I'd endure it. I raised him from a kitten.
Incidentally, he's also very good at waking me up for work.
Never crossed my mind, but I guess it's possible... never seen any mice ever.
Is there any downside to just keeping him in your room if that stops the problem? Does he not have access to his litter?
My cat yowls in the living room for attention right after he eats in the morning. I sleep right through that shit, but I run a fan for white noise in general. He also does it at night on occasion. We mostly trained him to know that it has the opposite of what he wants: We close the door and he loses access to the warm snuggles of the bedroom. A few weeks of getting thrown out of the room for yowling, and getting the door shut when he yowls near the door but in the hallway has taught him to mostly stop. Sometimes he cant help himself and does it in the living room, but it's far enough away that it's no longer an issue for our sleep. You have to really commit to not getting up though.
More just a nuisance. I usually keep the food and water in the living room, so if I move him, I move the food and water too. His litter's in the bathroom back here, so that's not an issue.
I try to sleep through it, but he is loud.
Cats are hard to change behavior in, with spectre I really have to either not give in on an extremely consistent basis or make the results of his actions immediately and consistently worse with a spray bottle. We also manage his food quite a bit, and use a timed feeder and a puzzle feeder.
Try playing with him for awhile real active before bed. Like 15+ minutes if you can. See if you can tire him out. This is just to see if he's bored. Does he have good spots to climb/look outside/hide/whatever he prefers?
The show My Cat From Hell is actually pretty great with advice.
My cats tend to do the second, usually around 3-4 a.m. After yowling a bit, they'll often carry a toy into the bedroom and drop it, waiting for me to do something with it. I haven't really mapped behavior, but I don't think they do it as much if they get some good play in before I turn in.
They are always disappointed. :biggrin:
He hates that...
Cats who want attention will keep doing whatever it is that works. Even if you throw a shoe or yell at them, they consider it a win because you wake up and give them attention. I'd try exhausting your cat before your bedtime as an experiment. Get a toy like Da' Bird - Petco or Amazon or a laser pointer (one that takes normal people batteries, not some elaborate watch batteries that cost way too much and don't last long enough). Go crazy for like an hour every night for a period of time and wear em out.
Maybe it's not practical to exhaust your cat every night forever, but if it ends up working by the end of a week then you might want to invest in some automated toys with timers.
Edit: To echo Iruka even if you only give in and respond to the behavior once in a hundred times, cats are assholes and will home in on that weakness until the end of time. It's hard to not react when your only goal is sweet precious sleep.
We try to wear our guy out at night. When he wont engage, a grooming session after the night time play, if your cat likes to be brushed, puts my dude right into bedtime mode as well. We have a dabird (or we did, I eventually changed it out for a real fishing rod), but we have to change out the toy on it CONSTANTLY or he will ignore it. We also buy those floppy, stuffing-less dog toys, and gruesomely cut open the neck and stuff them with cat nip. Those are great for the rabbit kicks.
If you can't get another cat, try and get your cat to play hard a couple times during the day and it shouldn't be as bored at night. Does your cat have a window perch? If not, some cats can be entertained enough by looking outside and visually chasing things out there, but this is not an every cat solution. Edit: Another thought, how is the vertical cat space in your home? If it's not great, giving it several levels to jump around on and perch from can also help a lot with cat boredom
I think getting an automatic toy to entertain the cat has a good shot at working short term, but it could also worsen the behavior if this is about getting you to play with it. Your cat is (probably) an annoying POS, but that POS does have a bond with you and it might be after your affection at the worst possible time.
Artemis goes onto bookshelves or the dresser sometimes, but not as much as he used to.
In my experience, when they detect prey they cant get at (like birds at the window or a moth halfway up the wall) cats make a weird chittering chirp kind of sound.
I solved some noisy nighttime cat problems with the opposite of Bliss 101's solution: Extra dry food at night (so he never had that "I see a little bit of bowl in the middle so the whole thing is empty and WHY ARE YOU STARVING ME WORTHLESS HUMAN RISE AND SERVE YOUR GOD!" fit, and moist food right before I went to bed so he felt like he had just gotten real food and didn't eat so much dry food anyway.
It wasn't perfect, but it made some progress. What ultimately solved the problem once and for all was my wife bringing a second cat home. Once they sorted themselves out the annoying cat would seek out the new cat and try to play before he'd come bother us.
We've only used this sparingly but one instance was when our cat was in the habit of trying to batter down the bedroom door every morning. (We abandon the rest of the house to our cat each night for her own uses. We don't free-feed her, so she can be aggressive about demanding an early meal.)
I try giving him more attention, but he just wants to be chased around.
The only problem with second cat theory is it seems to often end in random late night kitty thunderdome
Not that it always will! We have a 12 year old and a 2 year old and most nights they end up cuddling all night in the recliner.
But there are nights where if you're lucky you're not woken up by the deathmatch you just wake up to random tufts of fur all over in the morning because no longer a kitten doesn't realize that she's big enough that old kitty views her as a legit opponent and no longer just lets her escape every time he pins her which means she goes ok well then this old bastard needs to pay and... tufts of fur everywhere.
(they will inevitably be cuddling on the couch when you discover the fur tufts)