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Our 5 month old kitten keeps waking up our daughter in the middle of the night!

post #1 of 9
2/6/10 at 9:32pm
Thread Starter 
I'm new to the forum and have been searching for some help with our 5 month old kitty. She is a great cat. Very cool and playful. Never hides, plays and sleeps with our 80 lb mutt and 25 lb boston terrier/french bulldog, and has a great attitude. We haven't had any problems with her really except at night. At first she came in at around 4 or 5 am and would attack my husbands feet non stop. We finally broke her of that but now she is targeting my 4 year old daughter as her playmate. When we leave her door open Lexi will go in her room and try to play with her and wake her up but if we close it she paws at her door till she wakes up. My daughter was coming into our room in the middle of the night every night for a week before we figured out what was going on. She would come in our room to get away from Lexi so she could sleep. She has ample toys and I feed her before we go to bed and try to tire her out playing with her but she still does it. We have now had to put her in my lg craft room with her box, food and toys at night as we're really not sure what to do. its only been a couple nights but I hate to keep leaving her in there especially because she is so social. We want her to be able to be with the rest of the family. Any suggestion?
Thank you
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post #2 of 9
2/6/10 at 9:45pm
We keep our daughter's bedroom door. and ours closed for that same reason. The cats will not leave her or us alone if we don't. This way the cats have the run of the house with out disturbing the rest of us.
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post #3 of 9
2/6/10 at 11:07pm
My feeling is that she will grow out of it, just be patient with her. Holland was also 5 months old when I adopted her and she ALWAYS woke me up around 4-5 in the morning with either kisses on my face, or by attacking my feet under the covers (talk about extremes!).

Give Lexi some time to adjust to your schedule. When Holland got to be too much too early in the morning, I just shut her out of my room. I felt bad doing it, but I needed my sleep!! Now that she's an adult she is way more tuned to my schedule. Even when she wakes up before me she'll just leave my bedroom and go to the other room to hang out or play or whatever.

You're doing good by playing with her right before you go to bed, but the fact is that kittens have a lot of energy. Are you able to have several play sessions with her throughout the day? That might help in tiring her out for the nighttime.

ETA: Welcome to the forums! I am a new cat owner and I have gotten a lot of great advice here.
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post #4 of 9
2/8/10 at 7:54am
Thread Starter 
I guess I'm sure she will grow out of it and appreciate your responses. My question is though, is there any ideas on how to keep her away from our daughters door without having to shut her in the back rooms of the house by herself? Closing the door is not enough because she will just paw at it for an hour until my daughter gets woken up and opens the door. Then my daughter is only 4 and doesn't know how to deal with it properly as we do. She just gets frustrated, yells at the cat and comes in our room to get away from her. I want my daughter to be able to stay in her room and not get woken up. A more specific question would be: Is there something we can put in front of our daughters door to keep the cat from going up to it? Is there something I can spray on it or something I can put on the floor that she won't want to walk on? Something natural maybe? Tried foil on the floor but she just played with that. lol
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post #5 of 9
2/8/10 at 11:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by leximilan View Post
I guess I'm sure she will grow out of it and appreciate your responses. My question is though, is there any ideas on how to keep her away from our daughters door without having to shut her in the back rooms of the house by herself? Closing the door is not enough because she will just paw at it for an hour until my daughter gets woken up and opens the door. Then my daughter is only 4 and doesn't know how to deal with it properly as we do. She just gets frustrated, yells at the cat and comes in our room to get away from her. I want my daughter to be able to stay in her room and not get woken up. A more specific question would be: Is there something we can put in front of our daughters door to keep the cat from going up to it? Is there something I can spray on it or something I can put on the floor that she won't want to walk on? Something natural maybe? Tried foil on the floor but she just played with that. lol
Gus is 2 Lucky is almost 3 they still tries to get us up. They are afraid of the broom , We lean it against the wall outside our door. It is the only way we have found to discourage them. Gus is definately a nocturnal creature.
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post #6 of 9
2/9/10 at 6:24pm
We have the same issue with our cat- she's 17 mos old. We ended up putting a giant cardboard box near our bedroom door covered with a comforter (not attractive) to prevent Libby from scratching on the door when we have to lock her out of our room. We feel bad locking her out but she wants to play at all hours.
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post #7 of 9
2/9/10 at 6:35pm
When we added the second cat to our household, they both wanted to sleep between us on the bed. Max did a lot of giving in, but he was determined not to move from his place. They would wait for us to go to sleep then chase each other on and off the bed all night. The only thing that worked was to shut them up in the laundry room at night. From then on, they slept together on top of the washig machine. And we were finally able to get some sleep.
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post #8 of 9
2/9/10 at 6:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by blueyedgirl5946 View Post
When we added the second cat to our household, they both wanted to sleep between us on the bed. Max did a lot of giving in, but he was determined not to move from his place. They would wait for us to go to sleep then chase each other on and off the bed all night. The only thing that worked was to shut them up in the laundry room at night. From then on, they slept together on top of the washig machine. And we were finally able to get some sleep.

They had each other though. That would be too lonely for a five month old kitten all by herself.

How about a sscat! in front of your daughter's door at night? Or..is she likely to get up in the night? That might cause a problem

http://www.amazon.com/Premier-SSSCAT...5769866&sr=8-1
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post #9 of 9
2/10/10 at 3:22am
The solution matters if she regularly gets up at night(without the cat bothering her) and leaves her room, to go to the bathroom or whatever. If she doesn't then you could use something to scare the cat but not her

I'm assuming she wears underwear at night, it can be slightly different if she wears a Pull Up or whatever(my son wet the bed nightly until 7, so no judgments here if she does.) I would say if she doesn't get up to leave her room at night find some way to block her door from the cat but that could be bad in case of an emergency if you need to get out of the house and quick.

Maybe see if you could find a baby gate or something to keep the cat from getting to the door or something to scare the cat away like ssscat Like I said it all depends on your daughter and if she gets up at night or not.

Taryn
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