Cats waking us at 6am, ignoring them is not an option

Both of our cats (a one year old and a 4 month old) have taken up the habit of waking us at roughly 6am -every- morning. We're pretty sure they do this because our alarms are set to 6:05am during the workweek and they somehow have an internal watch that tells them it's about time we should wake up.

But sadly, they don't have an internal calendar that tells them that they should leave us be on saturdays and sundays (and during holidays). So we're trying to find a way of teaching them to stop waking us.

At first they start crying and whining for a few minutes and if we don't respond, they start scratching the bottom of the door, as if they were trying to dig a hole to get to us. We managed to prevent (or at the very least lessen) the scratching by putting a doormat under the door, so they can't reach beneath it to scratch, but the crying hasn't stopped (if anything, the lack of scratching-opportunities have made the crying worse, but at least the material damage has been limited).

We play with our cats for about half an hour (and we really wear them out by making them sprint and jump constantly) and then feed them before we go to sleep, but that obviously doesn't help.

I know the most logical response here is "just ignore them, they'll get it eventually and stop doing it".. But we can't. We need to get up, so if they start crying at 6:00, we have no other choice than to get up eventually. We ignore them when we do enter the living room; we just turn the light on and go straight to preparing breakfast and after half an hour or so we feed them and acknowledge their presence, but we've been doing that for a month now and they still cry at 6am.

We also tried taking them by surprise by setting our alarms half an hour earlier, which worked.. for one day. The next day they started crying at 5:30 and then it took a week of ignoring the 5:30am-crying to get them to cry at 6 again.

During the weekends we obviously ignore them and after 5-10 minutes they stop crying for half an hour, but then they try again for 5 minutes, and so on.

We have no idea what else we can do to stop this behaviour. I mean, it's not like they're keeping us awake and turning us into zombies at work, because they pretty much function as a fairly reliable alarm clock, but when we do want to catch some sleep during the weekends, their crying is annoying as hell.

Our cats do the same thing. The best solution we found was for one of us to drag ourselves out of bed and feed them, and then try to go back to sleep. They'll usually leave us alone for a few hours after that.

Well, half the food we give them when we go to bed, is still in their bowls the next morning.

We feed them roughly 20 grams each per meal, 3 times a day. They don't seem to eat all that much at night. By the time we get up the next morning, half of their night food is still in their bowls. We just add the morning meal to the left-overs and by the time we get back from work, all that food is gone.

So lack of food or hunger isn't the cause of their crying.. They just want to be with us, I guess (which is kind of sweet in a way, but this is borderline obsessive stalking!).

I can try, but I'm pretty sure they'll ignore the food and go straight back to crying the moment I close the door again.

The only thing I can think of is to just leave the door open at night, but we have tried that once for a few days and that just resulted in an entire night of jumping on and off the bed, hanging in the curtains (we were clever and didn't hang curtains in the living room, but we're forced to have curtains in the bedroom, for the sake of privacy) and messing around with cables (had to purchase 2 new USB cables that week because the little one is a chewer).

Damn cat woes!

My adopted cat, Ruby, used to wake me every morning between 5 and 6 and pester me till I got up.   My clock radio comes on a 6:00 every day and after 8 months she finally got the hint that I wasn't getting up till the radio came on.  However, I follow the same routine every day, including weekends, and get up at 6:00 and feed her, then go back to bed on weekends.

Since there is still food left in the morning, what do they do on weekdays after you get up and feed them? 

This may sound like I'm mocking you, though I assure you I'm not  , but have you tried earplugs? 

FhiCat said:

 
This may sound like I'm mocking you, though I assure you I'm not 

, but have you tried earplugs? 

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My husband actually keeps some earplugs in his bedside table.  He mostly used them to drown out our kids when they were tiny babies.    (If he didn't have a job that requires him to be well rested I probably wouldn't find his earplugs amusing. )  But I don't see why it wouldn't help with cats.  I understand why you keep them out of your room!  

I honestly don't remember how we ever trained our 2 to wait for breakfast.  DH always feeds them in the morning since he is up for work before me.  I think he feeds them at about the same time every morning. He's a morning person anyway.  Sometimes Noodles will start up at our door on the weekends; but I usually either don't hear it or I can ignore it.  

If only cats had a snooze button! On the weekends we are awoken by the It's Time To Feed The Cats Band at 7am sharp. It starts with a whisker tickle on the cheek and progresses to chewing on silk plants and knocking things off the night stands and bureau. When the parade starts we kick them out of the room and put our pillows over our heads for a half hour. If we let them stay in the room it results in a lot of crashing sounds. Eventually we just get up because the dogs have to go out anyway. Can you take turns with someone getting up to acknowledge them and then go back to bed?

Ooohh 6am?  I would LOVE to not be awoken by one of the boys - generally both - until 6am!  Haha.  Stomping on, specifically I'm sure, a kidney or two of mine or the DHs, starting a WWF-level wrestling match, or attacking feet, or just an outright howl in your sleeping face, when they are ready for breakfast!  Seriously, one of us is up between 4:30 to 5AM daily.

We are fortunate we are retired so our boys have a pretty set daily routine.  It took some work based on their individual personalities.   We have found that hard play before bedtime, accompanied (in our house) by an 1/8 of a cup of their favorite kibble = a hard sleep for our two.  Just near panting chasing 'da Bird or laser.  

Bluebird Gal said:

 
Ooohh 6am?  I would LOVE to not be awoken by one of the boys - generally both - until 6am!  Haha.  Stomping on, specifically I'm sure, a kidney or two of mine or the DHs, starting a WWF-level wrestling match, or attacking feet, or just an outright howl in your sleeping face, when they are ready for breakfast!  Seriously, one of us is up between 4:30 to 5AM daily.

We are fortunate we are retired so our boys have a pretty set daily routine.  It took some work based on their individual personalities.   We have found that hard play before bedtime, accompanied (in our house) by an 1/8 of a cup of their favorite kibble = a hard sleep for our two.  Just near panting chasing 'da Bird or laser.  

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Same here. Sophie is the one who wakes me every morning for breakfast. Lilith never has. She jumps up and sits on my chest then gently taps me on the cheek with her paw. Lately she has taken to gently biting me on the chin or cheek. I usually can stop her by petting her head before she gets close enough but this morning I received a nibble on the cheek. This usually happens at around 5 am. 

We call her Sophiesaurus  or Saurus for short. 

Ear plugs is a good idea, or try not to feed them right when you get up. If you do feed them right when you get up, everyday, they'll realize "Hey, we better wake em' up so we can eat!" Maybe feed them before bed?