Sweet cat swats at neck to wake up owner; news at 9

Hello! We are the proud, relatively new owners of two ~ 2 year old rescued cats. One is a beautiful princess with long flowing white hair and a beautiful black tail (that's chasca, easy to guess, I suppose); and the other is a small (6 lbs!), bobtailed black cat, Maya.

Maya is extremely loving , but very dependent. She does the following things I want help with:

1. If you don't allow her in a room, she sits outside and cries for hours (a couple of rooms are unsafe).
2. She likes to be fed at 0500; I've managed to change her sleeping habits to 0600, but her crying in the am prior to getting fed is intense!
3. Each morning, after she is fed, she comes back in the bedroom and swats at my neck until I get up! I've tried moving her aside, cuddling with her, etc - she insists on swatting my neck repeatedly.[/list=1]
   
   
   Any suggestions?
   
   Thanks,
   
   CnM's dad :tounge2:

Howdy and welcome to an informative place. I am going to move this to the Behavior forum for you.

I would advise doing two things. First, start leaving out dry food for her so she can eat at any time, and second, feed her a small amount of canned food when you have your dinner in the evening. This way she won't be hungry in the morning and she will realize that you feed her directly only in the evening. This should help a bit.

And....BRAVO to you for rescuing two adult cats! Too many people ignore the adults and only adopt the kittens. I tip my hat to you!