Deaf cat waking very early and disruptively!

Hello all,

Another "my cat wakes at 5am" thread... sorry!

I've had a look through at the others though, and I'm still not sure what to do as we seem to be following the advice. Any new thoughts appreciated!

We've had our deaf cat/kitten (indoor cat) since October and he's always been very vocal - the joys of a deaf cat! However, he is an early riser, and it's a real problem. Between October and January, we kept him in the living room on a night, but the yowling and howling and door scratching got worse as he got older.

We realised that, when we're out of the house or at work, his "safe place" is under the bed. The only places he sleeps are under the bed, or on one of our laps - which I think is a safety thing for being deaf. By locking him out our room, we were locking him out of where he sleeps, and as he follows us around he house to make sure we're still around, I don't know how fair it is to leave him in the living room not knowing if he's protected.

So - we opened our bedroom. Going to bed isn't a problem, it's the 5am wakeup that are leaving us exhausted. It starts off with a cuddle... flopping up next to our necks and napping. Then the pouncing happens. Then the walking up and down the bedside shelf, then finally the biting. All the while - yowls, and trills and merps! I don't think it helps that we live in Scotland and it gets light at 5am here, but aside from a couple of weeks when the clocks changed, it's been an ongoing problem regardless of how dark it is on a morning!

We're religious with feeding times - he gets fed on the dot at 8am. We're religious with making sure we don't feed him as soon as we wake up so that he doesn't associate waking us with being fed. There's always toys around for him to play with - balls, cuddlies and tubes, boxes, his scratching posts etc. We try to stop him napping on an evening and give him lots of attention when he's awake. We play with him when he is in the mood, but he's not really a big 'player' (he'll bat the worm on a stick etc, but only for a few minutes), the playing instinct seems to have worn off from his tiny kitten days and he's all about the pouncing now!

Help!

What do we do? How do we get some sleep?

Thank you!

You're doing the right thing by not giving in, but this is tough.  Can you darken your windows more?  Another thing you can try is a late night (1 hour before bed) vigorous play followed by a nice meal.  Play for cats is mostly predatory behavior so the play is like chasing the mouse.  Then the meal is the mouse and the cycle of predation is complete and hopefully this will let him sleep in a bit longer.

Thanks for the advice!

I'll look into getting some darker blinds for the bedroom, and making sure we shut the curtains in the other rooms we don't use as much. Hopefully that might help keep the light down.

We made sure to play with him before bed rather than earlier, and kept back half his dinner for when it was bedtime and that seems to have helped, 6.30am this morning, hooray!

Yay! Maybe a pic of the naughty cat! I have a blind cat so morning light is not a problem, but she is a devil! :-)

Here he is  super friendly and cuddly, but oh so loud!

So cute!!!

Understand the northern 'night time' issues all too well and it causes problems for animals and chidlren alike.  If you can it might be worth black-out blinds around all the rooms your boy gets access to.  Curtains are more prone to having gaps and letting in chinks of light.  If you try to disrupt his evening routine and stay up a little lateer at the same time so his body clock will hopefully be easier to re-set. It might work but not instantly.

If he really won't settle even with the blinds, toys that you can engage in with him but not have to get out of bed are another option but still involve being awake with him, at least for a while.  Something like DaBird which has a nice long reach with hardly any effort and gets the cat running about like crazy so you all have some chance of getting back to sleep.  I've used feather wands as well, running them around on the bed covers to get cat running about until tired, with hope they will wear out but still not got you out of bed.  

Thanks Mservant, good to know blackout blinds tend to be better than curtains! I really need to get one of these Da Birds. I suspect he will love it - he loves pouncing on the spider on a stick that we currently have

Da Bird does make a noise which is an added attraction for most cats but the benefit in your situation I think is the very slight movement you need to make with a wrist or hand to send the toy across something like a 3.5 m diameter play zone.  If he takes to it you do need to hide it behind 'locked doors' though as Mouse is not alone in fishing it out from the hardest of places:   the cord is really long so could cause problems if your cat ate it without supervision.  There are loads of different toys you can attach and swap round so worth getting a couple of different ones to chop and change, both flying and pulling varieties.

When Mouse was a kitten and wanted constant play I could run him ragged with feather wands or fishing rod play with minimal effort of my part while still in bed and after 15, 20 minutes I could get to sleep as he would be happy to rest again and cuddle in.  I'm sure you are right when you mention the reassurance with his hearing, and wanting you to engage in some way will give reassurance which he would not get if you were asleap.  Also, as he will have fewer triggers for independent hunting play than some other cats, for example Mouse will be excited and independently occupy himself listening to rustling behind walls or furnishings, or respond to bird noises outside.  Your little guy will have more learning oportunities and interest in his environment when you are engaging with him so it is understandable in that respect that if he is awake and looking for play that he comes to get you up.

If you get the blinds just make sure they don't have a trailing cord that your cat can get caught in and keep any cord tied up well as there have been fatal accidents with cats as well as with children.  You can pick up fairly cheep blackout blinds now in places like Ikea that can be cut to fit mosts windows so not too costly to try out.

@higgscat I hear you Loud and Clear. My 2 year old Pasha is also deaf, is also an early riser and is also not much of player. I also had sleep n the living room for few weeks but the howling outside my bedroom as of 4 or 5 am drove me insane so I started letting him into my bed and he still wakes up early but he's not as frustrated as when the door is closed. Sometimes he happy to sleep in the living room but I now keep my door open so as soon as he's up he'd come in to wake me. Loud and very fast tone howling if that makes any sense to you. I haven't figured out any solution yet. I figured I just have to live with it. Cats are anyways active at dusk and dawn. I've only had him for 3 months now and he's my first pet so I'm still figuring things out and reading as much as possible.
Sorry I have no advice but wanted you to know you're not the alone
Pls do let me know if the black outs work, I will certainly have these installed if it means couple more hours of sleep for me.