3AM CRYING - adult cat

Please help.

My cat is a 3 year old neutered male. He stays indoors. We are gone during the day from 8 until about 6pm Monday through Friday, and usually around on the weekends.

He has gotten in the habit of sitting on my bedside table and crying starting at 3AM. when i yell NO he runs away but comes back 5 minutes later.

Sometimes I will move him onto the bed with me and pet him and he will fall asleep next to me until 530, when I get up. Recently this tactic hasn't been working as well.

Our apartment is small and there is no other room to shut him in during the night. The bathroom is right next to our room so we can hear him when we put him there.

Does anyone have an idea what he wants? Or how I can get him to stop?

I'm losing so much sleep!!

I would tell you to ignore him. As much as it can be annoying and hard to do. Panther use to do this. We would tell him "shuss" etc... he would just go on. We started ignoring him when a friend gave us that advice. Your cat is meowing for attention and by responding (even if it's screaming) you are giving him what he wants. You can also close your bedroom door, at least even if he comes to meow he wont be right in you ear.

These days Panther will some times come in the bedroom and give a couple meows at 3-4am, I just ignore him and he doesn't continue.

Not to discourage you but if this has been going on for a while it will take longer for him to understand crying for attention will no longer work.

Best of luck

Thanks a lot - that has worked a few times with him... but sometimes he's very persistent. When we shut the door he tries to burrow underneath through the Berber carpeting (ack) so I can't do that anymore. But I'll give ignoring him another shot... I just hope my partner doesn't lose his mind before then...

Please click here for a good thread which discusses how to stop this problem. Also click on the links that are provided in the thread as well.

AWESOME. Both those links were VERY helpful. I will try some of the things there and see what happens.

Thanks so much!

Hi, and welcome to TCS. I had this problem with my Max when he was a kitten. What I finally ended up doing is play the living daylights out of him before we go to sleep and feed him a treat so his tummy is full (just a handful of his regular hard food, but shhhh he thinks it is something special). Also when he would wake up before the time I wanted him to I would push him down and leave him alone. No other interaction - no pets, no talking - nothing. He finally got the idea.
Hope this helps and sleep dreams.