No sleep for weeks - it's my sanity or the cat.

If you have any expertise – or even any experience – with cats, please help.  I am currently working in a third-world country (development nonprofit) and I adopted a kitten out of the gutter.  I’ve figured out food and even found flea/tick medication and dewormers – that’s not the problem.  The issue is training.

I haven’t slept more than 3 consecutive hours in almost a month.  I am losing my ****.  Let me explain my situation and maybe there is help out there.

I live in one room – there is a separate structure for the kitchen and the bathroom, which I share with a few other people.  There is a walled courtyard outside of my room – the wall is low enough for adult cats to get over, but not my kitten.  Here’s the problem: if I leave the kitten outside at night, I fear she will be attacked by the feral cats in the area.  If I keep her in my room, she wakes me up every 2-3 hours for playtime.

I have tried everything to get her to stop.  I know cats are nocturnal, so maybe there’s nothing I can do?  The lack of sleep is honestly making me crazy and I am at the end of my rope – I’m on the edge of just putting her outside for a night so that I can get some rest.  Recently I’ve been sleeping during the day (when it is safe to put her outside) and missing work. 

How can I get this kitten to understand that night-time is “be quiet” time?  My current system is hissing at her, or knocking her off the bed (all of 6 inches off the ground) when she wakes me up.  I don’t have access to most training tools, like spray bottles or…?  I don’t know how to train cats anyway – I’ve always owned dogs.   No matter how often I reprimand her for pouncing, scratching, biting, clawing it seems to make no difference.  She just runs away for all of 3 seconds before trying it again. 

It’s been weeks.  I can’t do this much longer.  Physically, I need to be able to sleep.  Please help us.

**To clarify, no, I could not put her in another room, like the kitchen/bathroom at night.  The people I share the space with would NOT be okay with it.

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The only way to train her to stop waking you up is to COMPLETELY ignore her when she does it. No reprimanding, no knocking her off the bed, no attention at all of ANY kind.  Just continue to lay still with your eyes closed as if you are still sleeping.  She will persist for a time (perhaps even a long time as now she is used to getting a reaction) but eventually, if there is no reaction, she will stop.

It is VERY important though that you NEVER react.  You must ignore her, completely, every single time, no matter what she does or how long she is doing it for.

This is the only thing (in my experience) that will work or that has any chance of working.

Another thing you can try is to have a BIG play session with her right before bed time to tire her out.  

Good luck.  I know this must be frustrating.

I am going to be blunt: You are possibly not ready for a cat, and your environment is not ideal for one.

That said, we'd rather the kitten be with you, who is clearly trying to do the right thing for the poor thing. We're here to help.

A couple of things popped out right away:

1) Punishment doesn't work. Spray bottles and yelling are not training tools - they are stress inducers. They are more likely to develop more behavior problems than actually doing what you want the kitty to do. See here and here.

2) Kittens play. A lot. They need to play, they need to burn off all the excess energy and play, play, play.

Once you understand these two things, you can take steps to work with the kitten instead of being frustrated. From your description, your room, or at least, your kitten's roaming area, is rather small. However, cats don't need a lot of space the way humans do. You can turn a small room into a "big" room for the kitten by having vertical space. Lots of it.

Give her lots of spaces to climb. Bookshelves, floating shelves, cat trees, tables, anything they can climb on. She needs to run around, climb, burn off energy.

Play with her. Play, play, play. Hang dangly toys for her to swat and bat at. Leave toys on the floor for her to bunny kick. Play with her with a wand when you get home from work. Tire her out before you go to bed.

If you can afford it, consider getting another kitten. That frees up a lot of your "play" time, because the kittens will entertain each other all day. With another kitten though, vertical space becomes much, much more crucial. They will need separate litter boxes for when they are no longer kittens. They will need places they can hide.

If none of the above works, consider re-homing the kitten. If you can't give her the care she needs, it's much better for everyone if she can go to a loving home who can give her what she needs. I don't know if there are shelters or rescues where you are, but if there are, check with them. Don't just abandon her outside.

A long play session right before bed may tire her out enough that she won't bother you. A feather or bit of fur on a string would make a good toy---use your imagination.

If you can manage to find or make a largish cage (big enough for a bed, litterbox, etc.), you can crate her at night. She may meow about it though. Maybe the cage can go in the walled courtyard? Keep her safe but maybe not too noisy.

Not reinforcing the behavior is important. For some cats (or dogs or people or. . .), even negative attention is reinforcing. So ignoring the undesired behavior completely or finding a way to redirect the behavior would be more effective.

Third world country means that rehoming this cat is probably not an option. The OP may as well dump the kitten outside and let her take her chances, which is what most people in that area would do. And sending an animal to a shelter in a third world country is a death sentence and it's not even a humane death. 

Training is the answer here... that and a LOT of patience on the part of the OP. Given where you are located, I imagine that finding another kitten to take in wouldn't be that difficult and I can tell you from experience that I would NEVER raise another kitten or a puppy, without a playmate of their own species again. The last time I tried to raise a puppy by myself, with no other pets in the house... I adopted an older dog three months later. She saved his life (she actually corrected him for chewing on a power cord while my back was turned, I heard the growl and came running) and spared me several gray hairs. I know having a playmate will save your kitten's life and your sanity too.  

Ideally, if you can find an older, well behaved and well adjusted cat that's not too old... say maybe a year or two old, I think that would be best for you. The older cat will definitely teach your kitten how to behave properly in a way that you and I just aren't effective at. 

I agree, a playmate would keep the kitten busy, hopefully too busy to mess with you. The only other thing I have found is to order a heated cat pad from Amazon, my cats love them so much they don't WANT to leave their beds! I wouldn't plug it in until night though and put her on it to feel the heat. If it was on during the day, she still might sleep then and keep you up all night. If you don't have electricity (the pads are about the same to run as a 60 watt bulb) They have mats you can heat in the microwave and ones that reflect their body heat back too. It's a 'kitten thing' for her to be so active at night, it WILL pass when she gets older, it's definitely like having a newborn in the house! Good luck and keep us posted.

I totally understand what you are going through!  I adopted a 4 month old kitten this past August and I had the same problem for a few months.  She'd play with my feet, yell at everything in the room and if she got bored enough she'd hop up on my bed and slam her body into my face.  I fixed the problem with basically all the advice everyone's left here.  I went back and adopted the kitten's mother which stopped the yelling at night and I left them lots of toys to keep them occupied.  (For your own sanity don't buy loud toys... I've made that mistake quite a few times!)  If it's any consolation, these issued only lasted a few months!

Thank you guys so much.  I really needed to vent and get some feedback!

Some of you are totally on point - in my area there are no shelters and no pet-supply stores.  If I want to crate her, I'll need to find a way to build a crate (like a big cardboard box with holes, maybe?) and there's certainly no market for heated pads.  Re-homing is not an option.  In my area (rural Ghana) people are much more likely to eat cats than to nurture them.  My neighbors already think I'm crazy for allowing it into my room.

I will keep in mind that I need to try to ignore her.  I will try to tire her out before bed.  I think she is sleeping all day long but, since I'm at work, I can't help that. 

Honestly, the idea of getting a second cat sounds like hell on earth.  I'm already having so much trouble from one cat!  What if they just play together all night and both keep me awake??  Not to mention bringing a second litter box into my tiny room and having to scavenge for 2x the cat food (not easy to come by here).  I think it would just be too much for me.  I don't resent the idea that I might not be "ready" to own cats...I do think I got in over my head.  I'm just not sure where to go from here.  Giving her up seems like a death-sentence.

You know... if you really feel over your head and want to save this kitty, you could ALWAYS contact a rescue group in the United States and see if any of them would be willing to fly her to the US from Ghana. It can't hurt to explore the possibility if you've taken on too much, the worst thing they will do is say no, but I see people do this for dogs all the time. There has to be a group out there somewhere that does it for cats too. 

Also, cheap and easy heated pet bed. 

Dry rice inside a plastic bag, allowed to sit in the sunshine all day. If you need to reheat it after dark to make it warm, you can stick it in the microwave for 30 seconds or less if you have access to one, just to get it all cozy. It will retain heat for a LONG time. Maybe not the whole night, but hopefully long enough for you to get 5 or 6 hours of sleep, instead of 3 or 4. Good luck. 

auri said:

 I don't resent the idea that I might not be "ready" to own cats...I do think I got in over my head.  I'm just not sure where to go from here.  Giving her up seems like a death-sentence.

Click to expand...

Despite everything, I want you to know that you have a heart bigger than a lot of people, myself included - working in a third world country to improve the lives of the people there, and then taking in a kitten and doing the best you can for her. You are a true embodiment of compassion, and I salute you for your selflessness. If this world had more auris, it would be a much better place. I hope you'll keep us posted on your successes - we'd hate to see you fall ill from lack of sleep!

@Fhi09.
You just made my eyes fill up. Silly old woman that I am. :'(

Two kittens are always less trouble than one, so maybe you can find another one in the gutter before it get eaten.  They will share a litter box.  You WILL have to scrounge a little more food but maybe you can get care packages from people like me in the states who have access to cat foodCrating a kitten is hard, it's their instinct to snuggle when they are little, and you are the only warm body.  I remember my first kitten when my husband and I were married, we were just kids, and she was a cross eyed Siamese.  We thought she should sleep in the nice little back room we had set up for her.  Siamese are very loud.  She let u know that leeping in the back room was fine during the day but not at night.  She wanted to share our bed.  When we caved, she moved into our bed and our hearts and that was that. 

Nobody told us about playing bedofe bedtime, but SHE taught u to do that.  Yes, the natural cycle of the cat is to sleep, then hunt, then eat, then sleep more, so wear her out when you get home, and perhaps feed her when it's closer to your bedtime.  I do that with my mob.  They get hyperactive right before their "dinnertime" and I run them ragged with the laser light toy and the DaBird toy which is feathers on a long string on a stick that you fly around above their heads.  You could make a toy like that and we could send you a laser light or two.  Then they eat and THEN (now, 8:42 PM my time) I get some uninterrupted time on the computer with nobody doing bank shots off my keyboard.  No way could I do this if they had not been first played with and then fed.  I have rescues in addition to my own cats so they can't all sleep with me, but the five who do learned at an early age that if yo disturb the human, you will become airborne, and if yo persist, you will find yourself outside the door.  (The human puts in earplugs and ignores you.)  Cats learn fast and we all sleep peacefully for as long as I want.  They don't bug me for breakfast either, until I actually get up.

That's what I do with Porter before bed. I play with him until he's tired of playing. Porter's old, so it only takes about 15 minutes to wear him out, then I set down his final meal of the day and turn out the lights. Then I do the same thing again before breakfast when I wake up in the morning. 

Really great advice above! 

Thanks so much for all of your kind words.  I can't really take credit for being as benevolent and giving as you seem to think - this crazy furball is giving me the affection and companionship I was craving.  We both needed each other for different reasons.

Since I posted, I've really taken the advice to ignore her as much as possible at night.  I'm not sure if she's been quieter or if I've just been too exhausted to notice, but I've been woken up less often the past few nights.  I've also been playing with her as much as possible before bed (NO cat naps allowed between 8PM and bed) and for two night I've been hiding little treats around the room for her to "hunt" when I'm asleep - if she gets bored. 

I also have a cardboard box on standby in case we have another really terrible night of kitty-playtime-attacks.

We're also working on her biting, which she does all the time.  She's just playing, but it does hurt, and I don't want her to keep this habit into adulthood (with adult-sized teeth).  I've been doing a little reading into training, but since you guys are all so knowledgeable...will the "ignore" trick work for biting, too?  Or is reprimanding better?

And thank you again for your offers to send food or toys.  I've already had one package from my family with some food, a laser pointer, dewormers, and Frontline (the last one definitely a godsend, since she was covered in fleas).  I'm mixing the food with locally-available options (canned meats, hardboiled eggs, fish) to make it last.  I'm only going to be here for a few more months, so I think it will last.  And, as my parents report, mailing packages to Africa is surprisingly expensive!  Upwards of $150 for a 12x12 box.  So THANK YOU so much for your incredibly generous offer, but I think we'll manage

I'll report back on how things are going.  I'm still very wary of adopting another cat, but we'll see how this one does over the next few days and weeks.

This is the kindest, most helpful forum I've ever posted in

 

auri said:

We're also working on her biting, which she does all the time.  She's just playing, but it does hurt, and I don't want her to keep this habit into adulthood (with adult-sized teeth).  I've been doing a little reading into training, but since you guys are all so knowledgeable...will the "ignore" trick work for biting, too?  Or is reprimanding better?
 

Click to expand...

Kittens use the claws and teeth to play, and mom cats teach their youngs how to inhibit the force of their bites.

Kitty must learn that human hand is for petting, not playing. Don't use your hand to play with her. Again, this is going to take some time for Kitty to learn. Only play with her through toys. She must learn that when there is a human hand, it is there for pets and cuddles, not for play. When she starts biting, redirect her attention to a toy. Always keep a small toy on you for this purpose. 

She won't get it right away. You can hiss at her when she starts to bite. Don't use it as a punishment, but merely to get her to stop biting. Stop whatever you are doing when you hiss. She will learn soon enough that you are displeased when you hiss. You can also try a sharp "NO" (not yelling, but a sharp and distinct enough tone that she would not mistaken it for anything else). This voice (and the hiss) should be reserved for biting, painful moments. You don't want to use them too often or they lose their effectiveness.

When she bites, don't pull your hand away. That is an invitation to play more. Freeze in spot - yes, this is completely counter-intuitive - while you say NO or hiss. If she wouldn't let go, push IN towards her. When she lets go, ignore her for a few minutes. The message you want to send is, "Bite = no more play". 

Another method you can do (which I do) is to blow a quick puff of air at her. They hate that.

The most important thing you can train her is to recognize your hand as a petting, not playing, thing.

You're certainly getting on well. Will you take her with you when you leave. You can't just desert her now. You both belong to each other.
We're thinking of you.

Arg! I just wrote a whole big long post... then hit the back button somehow!

 Here is the jist of what I wrote-

     I agree with getting her to play before bed as much as you can. Feed a snack before bed, after play. It worked wonders for us... a few months later and we don't need to do it anymore. 

    A good cheap toy that doesn't need a lot from you is a stick with a sting on the end... you can go 'cat fishing' , Ours love it!

     A good method of discipline that really works well for us-  when they do something wrong get right in their face literally and say in an angry but calm voice  'I am talking in an angry voice so you know I don't like what you did' then I walk away and ignore them. it keeps it short and consistent.

Best of luck!

When you do get back to the States think about a companion for her. I soooo dreaded that if I got another cat they would team up with Zoey and drive me nuts. Since I got Luna I sleep completely through the night. I don't notice them unless I roll over on one sleeping on the bed. They truly do keep each other busy. I've found two are easier than one.

When I'm telling blighty off it's 'no' in a stern voice and the the finger. The index finger. It's beginning to work.
Strangely enough although he came to me age roughly 2 months straight from the streets he's never bitten or scratched deliberately.
And he loves his little small soft rubber balls. That shouldn't be expensive to post they are so light if you would like some. His favourite is a chewed smelly little red one. It's like his blanky!!

I will definitely be taking her with me when I leave.  I'm not sure where airline-approved "pet carriers" are sold here, but I'll make something work.  Thanks for all of your suggestions. 

Do you mind if I tack on one more question to this thread?  Last one!

Because of our living situation, she is spending part of every day outside.  My room is simply too small to shut her in all day and all night, and the feral cats don't seem to come around until late evening.  She's grown much more confident lately and has been spending time wandering around the courtyard, chasing lizards, until after dark (although the indoors is available to her).  Tonight she shot back inside, yowling, and an adult (feral) cat followed her inside.  I ran it off, but the kitten and myself are both pretty shaken by the encounter!

What would happen if she couldn't get back inside in time?  Or if a feral cat came around during the day, when I'm not home?  She is about 10 weeks old.  She could run away, but only so far since she can't scale the compound walls (adult cats can).  Would she likely be cornered and hurt?  Killed?  Would the feral cat leave her alone after one bite/swipe, or will it keep attacking until she leaves its "territory" (which she'd be unable to do)?

I know these are all difficult questions with multiple possible answers.  I'm probably not being very clear, since I'm still feeling some adrenaline after scaring that feral cat out of my room!  I don't want to have to keep her inside all the time, and I don't think she'd appreciate that either.  Am I risking her life by allowing her outside?  What would likely happen if she was cornered by a feral cat?

Thanks so much for your insight and ideas!!