Simon doesn't let us sleep at night! Help!!

Hi everyone,

So our elderly cat Simon, who used to get in bed with us and sleep all night long, has been keeping us (well, mostly my partner) up for the last several months, and it's making life tiring, to say the least. Simon just walks around the bed all night, headbutting us, touching our faces, meowing, wanting to talk, wanting treats--you know the routine.

He has his own little cat bed that we got for him when he had his surgery, and he spent all his time there (at least during the day), and when he recovered, started this whole nighttime circus all over again. Nowadays, he doesn't get in his bed at all.

My partner Kyle said that Simon woke him up at least seven times last night.

We thought about just closing the door, but he'll "knock" all night until we let him in, so I just don't have any ideas, other than trying to keep him awake all day in the hopes he'll sleep all night.

Does anyone have any ideas to save our sanity???? Please help!!

Thanks!

That's no fun! My kitten used to do the same thing. Luckily he grew out of it. It sounds like your cat is feeling much perkier after his surgery. Try playing (whatever he's capable of after surgery and for his age of course) before bedtime to wear him out some. Maybe then he'd feel like sleeping some more!

You'll have to get him used to sleeping all night again. Try ignoring his antics as much as possible until he gives up. He'll go back to his routine for sure.

Interestingly, I recently posted about a similar problem with my new male (5 years old) Grigio who usually wants to start waking me up about 1:30 am, and "insists" that I be up by 3 am at the latest! I followed the advice from others to feed him before bedtime and tire him out with play with limited success (he won't play if he doesn't want to!). We're still working on this problem, but I realize that since he's "new" (adopted a month ago), I've been spoiling him because he's waking me for attention rather than any need of his. In fact, if I get up, he'll usually wind up going to sleep within the hour, leaving me wide awake and frustrated!

However, I had an experience similar to yours with my elderly cat when she was about 18 (she died in April at close to 20). When she was younger, she never woke me but was always "alert" when I got up for work at 4 am. After I retired, she insisted that I get up at 4 am every day--she "knew" the schedule! That didn't bother me, as I'm basically a morning person, but when she was about 18 and completely deaf, she seemed to lose her sense of time and would howl for me to wake at various times during the night--from midnight on. Like your Simon, she would cry and howl if I tried to close her out of the bedroom, but I got desperate. Her litter box was in my study a few rooms away from my bedroom. She had a bed in there, so in the evening I would put in some food and water and close her in for the night. If she cried, I never heard her, and she would be in her bed when I went in in the morning. That worked for us. Although I preferred having her sleep with me, my health couldn't take that sleeplessness.

I forgot to mention that I talked to my vet about my elderly cat waking me at all ungodly hours of the night, and he explained that at her advanced age, she was probably having small strokes--i.e., her behavior was a kind of feline senility, with her loss of sense of time probably permanent. That's why I opted to re-locate her at night. The vet said that the problem would not likely resolve itself because it was being caused by her old age. You didn't mention how old Simon is, but my girl was about 17 when this began to happen.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I appreciate it, as always.

Originally Posted by HappilyRetired

I forgot to mention that I talked to my vet about my elderly cat waking me at all ungodly hours of the night, and he explained that at her advanced age, she was probably having small strokes--i.e., her behavior was a kind of feline senility, with her loss of sense of time probably permanent. That's why I opted to re-locate her at night. The vet said that the problem would not likely resolve itself because it was being caused by her old age. You didn't mention how old Simon is, but my girl was about 17 when this began to happen.

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Simon is about 18, so there could be something to this. Other than staying up all night, his behavior is almost the same as its always been, and he's still very active. He sometimes runs full-speed down the hallway past me, then looks around the corner to see if I was watching him. Cracks me up every time.

I'll ask the vet about the possibility of strokes, but another part of me thinks he's extracting his revenge for 18 years of being woken up by us when he's trying to sleep, LOL! I'll watch him a little more carefully to see if he leans to one side when he's walking (haven't noticed it), which was an indication that one of my cats when I was growing up had had a stroke. She only died very recently, having lived to a very ripe old age, so the fact that she had a stroke at one point didn't really seem to have impacted her quality of life.

Daniel-

My girl didn't have any other physical manifestation of these "strokes." The way my vet expained it is that now that cats and dogs are living longer due to improved care and nutrition, vets are observing physical changes that they did not see in the past. He said that as they get increasingly older, their brains shrink, causing microscopic "strokes"--i.e., small bleeds--that affect behavior in different ways. I'm not saying that this is what's happening to your guy, but at his age, it can be expected. I really don't think it's "revenge" but bodily changes that he's subject to as part of aging, resulting in different behaviors.