Teaching your cat NOT to beg for her Meow Mix in the morning

Hey All,

Our cat Jaden enjoys her meow mix, and we usually server her breakfast to her at 7:30am. Surely every morning an hour or two before it's time for her breakfast she'll be crawling all over us and getting into things, moewing until she gets her breakfast (now I know why they call it Moew Mix!). She's about a year and a half. I usually get up before 7:30 to work on the computer. My wife sleeps in until it's time to feed Jaden. I usually just end up babysitting Jaden just to keep her from moewing at the bedroom door. I want to keep her away from the door, and teach her that there's a time when breakfast is served, and if she wants to eat before then she'll have to eat her dry food.

Distracting her with toys is just a temporary solution.
Lately I have using a can of spray air (the kind for cleaning dust), and it works well as a disciplinary tool. (I guess she thinks it's hissing)
Even that only gets her away from the bedroom door, but surely 5 minutes later there's meowing and whining again at the bedroom door. If I leave the door open, she climbs onto the headboard and knocks lamps and things over. She killed my prized spongebob lamp, the bulb melted the plastic!

Anyway, I want to know if any of you have had positive results in training your cat not to beg for her breakfast in the morning.

Scott

this is precisely the reason I feed my cats dinner rather than breakfast do you leave dry out? that might be something to try, leave a little dish of dry out fro her to munch on until breakfast is served

Welcome to TCS by the way

Can't help much with the training part - I have learned that you don't train a cat - they train you.

There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast!!

This is the very reason why I started to feed Ceci at night. I usually wake up around 7, and by 6:30 Ceci was up and about being a pain in the rear end. Luckily though, she doesnt like canned, so I just refill her dish with dry around 10pm. She nibbles during the day but really scarfs her food at night.

BTW, Im sorry about your Spongebob lamp!! My baby boy and I absolutely worship Spongebob but DH says ive brainwashed the boy

My parents used to feed Duke in the morning befor he was my cat. It took 3 weeks of constant meowing and me ignoreing him for him to get in the 5:00 in the eveing dinner time pattern. Just be patinet. They do get a treat in the morning after I wake up as a reward for not waking me up.

Radar gets wet lunch at midday, and wet dinner in the evening. I top up his dry in the evening so that he can have that for breakfast. He starts pestering me for his lunch at between 11 and 11.30, but I'm awake enough to deal with it by then

I've found that my cats go through phases of begging for food in the morning. I feed them both morning and night and leave dry food out, but sometimes they still wake me up to get fed. The phases usually last a few weeks and then go away for awhile. So it might just be a phase.

I feed wet at night only, and free feed dry.

Ginger used to bug the heck out of me in the early mornings. I would shut her out of the room, turn up my fan and IGNORE HER.

Now she waits until the fan gets shut off in the mornings and then comes running to greet me good morning. I no longer have to lock her out of the bedroom.

Cats CAN be trained, you just have to learn to ignore the crying, same thing with skin-children, LOL!

Hi Scott!!!

Welcome to TCS! Silly human, once you learn to feed Jaden immediately the problem will be solved! After all, the world does NOT revolve around you, your work, or your wifes sleep, it revolves around Jaden! Once you learn this you will be done feeding her and have plenty of time to work on the computer, and your wife will be well rested.

It is they who train us, not the other way around!!!

TTYL, Heather

Welcome, Scott! I feel your pain. Our cats get fed at 7 am every morning, and they make sure of it. Forget sleeping in on the weekends...

You might want to check out this thread: http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90105

Thanks for all the replies. We split her wet food into breakfast and dinner. I like the idea of lunch and dinner, instead of breakfast. But do I want to ignore her begging for three weeks?

Then again, you're right when you say they train you, haha! We also give her medicine in the wet food (which was our original intent with the wet food). And the recommended dosage is every 12 hours. We do feed her dry food and there's still a bit left in the morning when we feed her wet breakfast.

I suppose I could just feed her when I get up.

Hi, I just always leave out some dry food.

As I said, we do leave some dry food out, but that's not what she wants

She's a spoiled cat, albeit a healthy spoiled cat... She sleeps on our bed with us, even though she's not quite a lap cat yet. She's getting there but is just too energetic to sit in a lap for ten full seconds.

Me and my wife have water bottles that we spray our cats with when they try to wake us up for whatever reason. The only problem is that they learned very quickly that they run faster than the water sprays, so they are in the next room by the time the water reaches where they were when we sprayed.

Then, of course, they come back 5 minutes later and do it again.

Ususally I just get up and feed them because they seem to have won this battle.

The can of spray air has replaced the squirt bottle as a better deterrant. At one point she just ignored the spray bottle, and didn't care about getting soaked. Not so with the spray air. Plus I can use it from a mile away, I think she thinks it's hissing.

Anyway, as we both said, it's only a temporary solution. Although I admit there is no more spongebob lamp to knock over. I left the door open this morning though and she seems better behaved today. A couple meows earlier, but now she's laying on the bed.