i love being cuddled... but this is too much!

I have two kittens, Tuna & Rye who are absolutely wonderful. They are almost 8 months old. Aside from them playing so loudly my downstairs neighbors complain, I couldn't be happier with my newfound family.
Tuna has recently started this unnerving thing of getting right up in my face at 5 AM. He puts his nose up to my nose and the whiskers tickle. I turn my head and he promptly gets up and moves to the side i'm facing and does the same. I don't know what he wants! He has food water, clean litter box.. my sleep is precious to me and those last two hours make a world of difference. I make it seem innocent, but he's a little obsessive. Why?

He loves you and wants some scritches back in return Jack tries to push his nose in my mouth or hand and that's him tell me he wants scritched. Once i do that he's fine and settles back down

Actually, 5 AM is a good time to wake up (for cats that is)

yeah Samson does this. The time varies. ranges from 5 am to much later on some days. on a weekend he managed to leave me till 12! but usually he cant wait past 6.30am. He starts by doing the face tickling... then moves on to licking my face,... then he licks my eyelids....then he tries to lick my mouth... then he play-bites my nose... then he play bites my earrings. Its SO annoying...

Im still working on sorting it, but the only thing i can suggest is DONT GET UP. I cant help but try deter him and move him off but I do try not to. Because its attention he is after. he is bored. wide awake and nothing is happening. If he gets what he is after and you get up, even if its just to check his litter tray and cat food he will learn waking you up works, just try your best to ignore it.

Im gonna get some toys he can play with on his own, at the moment most of his toys need me to interact with him via the toy, im hoping i can get something he can just do on his own for the times before im awake,but from his perspective nothing compares to the love and attention you can give him. He lovvvvess you... and he shows it by being a pain in the arse lol.

everyone who replied before me is a lot more patient. lol. i bet you just get up at 5 am and play with them and dont worry about discouraging the behaviour in the future.... lol.

Thanks everyone. He sure is a pain sometimes. I've never had cats before and I have fallen head over heels for these two. It's a learning process I suppose. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions

Oh, do come back with any questions. You will find some really helpful people here!

We prevent our cats from waking us up too early by not letting them in the bedroom at night! Actually, this is done because my husband has to sleep with the window open and we don't want curious cats escaping. When we first got the cats, we allowed them to be in our room at night, and they used to drive us crazy. Both of us realised we were having really poor quality sleep, so the need to have the window open (husband has slight asthma, so he needs the fresh air to circulate at night) has had the added bonus of letting us sleep peacefully.

When Zane does this, I just pet him for a bit and he curls up next to me an purrs me back to sleep.

Mine does that too, I just kindly ignore her until I am ready to wake up.

This reminds me of that cartoon video of the cat trying to wake up his person

Stop feeding him in the morning??

If I wake up my human she will fed me and give me attention.

Shermie does this too. I think it's because he's hungry/not sleepy anymore. ANd Sometimes I think he doesn't realize how long his whiskers are. LOL. But when he does that i blow a short puff of air near him or flick him lightly on the nose. He's been doing it less frequently now.

because we live in a shared house with friends we have to have his food and litter tray in our room so we have to always leave the door open. Is a pain for travelling noise from downstairs. Wish we could have another arrangement but its fairest for our friends this way.

I would ignore him, it may seem harsh but if you reward his behaviour by giving him attention, he'll do it every morning. Hopefully, if you ignore him, he'll eventually give up and go and bother his litter mate instead. It is very cute though

Jack used to do this all the time, and what got me was that his nose was SOOOO COLD!

I usually told him that I was sleeping and went back to sleep...He hasn't done it much for several months. Good luck!

PS: I know someone with two kitties who do this, and she's let them encourage her into waking up and feeding them...Now every morning she does it, because they basically will not leave her alone till she does!

Stanley does this every morning. He starts out by kneading my head, relentlously. I usually grab him and put him under my arms, and he's content there for a while, but then starts kneading again. If this doesn't get me up, he likes to go around my bedroom, jump on my vanity or dresser and knock everything off. It's my own fault, because when stuff starts breaking, I get up and feed him. :-(

Be greatful he has the 5 AM crazies and not the 3 AM crazies. A lot of cat owners are woken by their cats in the middle of the night. When mine actually manage to wake me (I've mostly learned to ignore them), I give them the "corporal cuddle" punishment: grab them, bring them close to my chest, hug them tight and kiss them. They usually get annoyed then settle in at the foot of the bed. After a while they stop doing it.

You have to watch this video to understand corporal cuddling. It actually works:
http://thecatsite.com/forums/showthr...light=engineer

Originally Posted by Momofmany

Be greatful he has the 5 AM crazies and not the 3 AM crazies. A lot of cat owners are woken by their cats in the middle of the night. When mine actually manage to wake me (I've mostly learned to ignore them), I give them the "corporal cuddle" punishment: grab them, bring them close to my chest, hug them tight and kiss them. They usually get annoyed then settle in at the foot of the bed. After a while they stop doing it.

You have to watch this video to understand corporal cuddling. It actually works:
http://thecatsite.com/forums/showthr...light=engineer

Click to expand...

I never realized this had a name! I call it "power lovins", not sure if this is the same concept. When Seb was younger and oh so demanding, I would give him lots of power lovins, which he didn't really like much. I would pet him lots and lots (gently) and do big baby talk all at once.

I cannot see the video here at work, but will watch later.

My two used to use me as a springboard for their nightly runs across the apartment. Since I slept in the middle of the area, I really didn't think it was fair to lock them away. So, I just got used to it. They rarely bother me in the middle of the night any longer - if they do, I don't notice. It's amazing what you can get used to. However, I did recently move to a one bedroom apartment where I have the bed in a corner so they have lots of room to run without my body being in the way.

I don't feed first thing after waking up so they don't associate my wakefulness with food