Update/Advice on sleeping with your cats?

Hey y'all, long time no see! Got busy with a second job and such & haven't been able to be around much I've missed y'all and your kitties very much!

I posted previously about apartment hunting & my unhappiness about the situation, both living in my current tiny 1BR and finding a bigger/less expensive place.  Long (and I mean LONG) story short, I'll most likely be moving out of this apartment into a friend's carriage house (like an ohana/guest house behind the main house).  This will cut my bills by more than half, enable me to quit the second job, and generally increase my & the kitties' standard of living and lower our stress. YAY!!!

My only real concern is that other than a bathroom and a kitchen, the rest of the house is one big room.  The kittens are older (and HUGE!!!!! The boys are bigger than some of your full-grown cats! I'll post a bonus pic below.) and calmer, and they'll be 10 months old (Joni 9 months) by the time we move in, but they're still essentially nocturnal, and still love playing and running and wrestling, so they haven't joined me in my bed yet.

Will I ever sleep in my new house??? Do you have experience sleeping with rowdy kittens?  Do you have sleep advice for me, or behavioral advice for the kittens?  I'm really hoping I'll be able to make this work for at least 2 years, so I am hoping to learn to successfully sleep with kittens in the house.  Help!

All right, here's your bonus picture of my huge, 11-pound boys!  I can't believe they will still be growing for several months - I think it's impossible for them to get bigger.  Their dad must have been a Maine Coon!

Congrats, that's fantastic!!!
I have 4 cats in a tiny 1br apartment, and I am a very very light sleeper...... I wake up with a fly in the room, type of thing. Amazingly, my kitties tend to follow my schedule
As soon as I jump on bed, Bugsy jumps right on it, meows, turns his butt to my face :lol3:, waits for me to acknowledge him :heart3:, then curls up by my pillow and purrs himself to sleep. Yep, he has a routine that he follows every single night.... and my goodness, I am addicted to it!
Lucky quietly spends a few minutes by my feet with Hope, but when she notices I am about to sleep, she jumps off the bed.
Gracie has her area.

They all sleep at night.....
My advice for you, is to give them plenty of vertical space - I have shelves on the walls for them to run up and down - these shelves run from 1ft to all the way to 6ft long; window sills, cat trees, etc. Make an area for them to chill and sleep. Keep an area of the bed clean of pillows, that is going to be their side..... And most importantly, try to keep some sort of routine - My kids know the time I clean the litter box, turn off the living room light, gracie's light, do my hygiene, turn off the corridor light....... means time to go to bed.
Try to play with them a little bit before you go to bed an in the morning, so they are tired and spend some quality time burning some energy....
You will do just fine, you will see!!
Probably Laurie, LDG will chime in soon, as she lives with 8 in an RV...... She must have great tips for you!

Thats good that you found a new place!

I dont really have advice on the whole sleeping thing because my cats are all lazy. So they sleep when we sleep and sleep allllll the time. When they get rammy is when DF is home and its play time. When its just me and them its so low key here that all we do is lay around like lazy bones.

When did those "kittens" get so big??? (I was going to put the "thud" icon here, but I can't find it.) Boy, it wasn't all that long ago that they were kittens. They're gorgeous boys.

Most of our cats are older, so they tend to sleep pretty much all the time. Eat and sleep, then eat and sleep. The younger two, Mollipop and Tabby, are way more energetic, but even so, they learned quickly when it was time for bed. Tabby has a tendency to wake up fairly early, around 4:00 or so, but we think that's because Bootser starts in crying for breakfast at the time. Once Tabby is awake, she's ready to play....she was attacking my foot under the covers this morning at 4:15.

When we first got Mollipop and again with Tabby, as soon as they were out of the computer room all the time, I would pick them up and take them to bed at night. (Well, in Mollipop's case, she never was in the computer room at night...she had come from the vet, so we knew she didn't have any diseases, fleas, etc. And the other kids pretty much adopted her right away.) Yes, they would play with us in bed, but once the lights were out, they learned to sleep when we did. Tabby still plays for awhile, even after lights out, but she soon goes to sleep.

I agree about play time about an hour or so before bed. And follow playtime with a bit of a snack for a full belly. A quick bath and the boys should be ready to drop off.

Congratulations about your new place!

WOW the kittens DID get big ! So cute :heart3: My cat's usually sleep all night too. Not too much trouble at all. EXCEPT Presley!! He always comes in around 3:00 a.m. and lays on my next purring and will even meow I don't mind, the purring lull's me back to sleep, but he keeps moving and then I keep waking up. Then he will mew softly. It is so cute, but does disturb my sleep :lol3: When I have had enough, I just push him away and he then settles at my feet :lol3:

Awww they are so cute!

We used to kennel Mooch and Noodles when they were small.  So for them we'd play a lot before I went to bed.  It helped tire them out.  Plus it put them on a routine of sorts.  They were really happy with our cat tree too.  It gave them a place to move more and also a place to chill out.  I think the playing was the biggest help.  You might find that once they see you snuggled in that comfy bed; they'll want to join you.  I know when I was at home my cats would play at night; but you get used to the noise.  If noise bothers you; get a sound machine.  They are relatively inexpensive and do help drown out background noises.  We take one on trips for our DD to help her sleep.  We put it on the Waterfall setting and turn it up however much we need to.  If you have a privacy screen; that might be something you could use so that your bed doesn't become part of their racetrack during the night.  Plus it'll help give your sleeping area some privacy if  you have company.

I think it's sort of like having a baby; eventually you get used to the noises made around you at night and can sleep through the ones that don't need attention. 

Thanks for all the advice!  I think I will try to start sleeping with the door open while I'm still in this apartment to maybe get accustomed to the sounds of their play, which I currently drown out via the door and a noise-canceling fan.  The great thing about this house is because my friend owns it (and is a cat person! with three of her own), I can install inexpensive DIY shelving on the walls to get them some vertical space to play in.