Please Help! Sleepless In Sydney!

Our male Burmese, 2 years old, has been getting into nasty fights with other toms in the neighborhood. On the vet's advice, we have stopped his night-time prowling by keeping him inside the house at nights, since the vet says that night-time prowls encourages the tom's territorial instincts and encourages fights with other cats who later trespass.

However, since keeping our cat inside at nights, he meows and complains all night long, waking us up and letting us have no sleep! He constantly knocks himself against window panes, leaps into bed and makes a fuss because he wants to go out.

I have proposed to my wife that whenever he makes a noise we make a loud noise and tell him to stop. I hope after a few weeks of consistently doing that, he'll stop. My wife says you can't discipline cats. This is becoming a REAL PROBLEM!

HELP! PLEASE ADVISE!! WHAT CAN WE DO???

OBarbas, Sleepless in Sydney

I am assuming he is neutered. If he isn't, that will be the most helpful thing for him.

Otherwise, I would recommend a very intensive and active play session each night before bed. Spend a minimum of 10 minutes having him chase, leap, run... whatever it takes to burn up energy. For most cat owners who have noisy night-time cats, this works wonders!

Yes he is neutered! Thanks so much for your advice! Any further ideas from anyone will be very much welcomed!

Feeding him some warmed cat food right before you yourself are ready for bed will help. Interactive play with a toy on the end of a fishing pole will help. Installing a cat condo near the window will help him as well, for he will climb onto the condo and watch out the window. If you can, order a Comfort Zone Room diffuser and run that. Spray your bedroom with Feliway Spray especially near the window he wants to knock into. Invest in a black light and go outside in total darkness with the light on and look at the sides of your house near where all his activity is centered. Do you see any glowing spots? That is cat urine, and so take an enzyme cleaner and scrub those spots well. It could me ferals are coming and spraying and he can smell it. Install a fish tank with a tightly covered lid, and secure it down so he can't knock it over. Leave a light burning in the tank at night so he can watch the fish.

Take a look at Katwallks.com and invest in the ramps to put up the side of your wall to give him incentive for extra excercise. Also, if you and your wife can stand it, play an endless CD at night of classical music, really really low in your bedroom. Better yet, anything that contains harp music has the ability to calm even the most rambunctious or stressed cat.


Good luck!

WOW! ...!!!!!

This is fantastic! We have our work cut out for us!

Anybody else! All of these ideas will be acted upon!

Thank you so much!!!!

As difficult as it is, the best way for him to get the point that crying and jumping on you isn't going to get him what he wants is to completely ignore him. Play dead, or at least asleep. It won't happen overnight, unfortunately for your sleeping, but it will work eventually. Obviously, if he's banging on things enough to hurt himself you need to interfere, but what he sees right now is that he is getting a reaction from you even if it isn't what he really wants.

Cats can be trained, but they really only respond to positive reinforcement. Negative punishment generally doesn't work in the long term - i.e. a loud noise will startle him out of an unwanted behaviour like play biting, but taking away the hand and the play when he does it will ultimately train him not to bite (not that you have this problem, just an example). Basically, you have to convince the cat that it is in their best interest to do what you want them to do.

Invest in some earplugs during the training period.

Thanks everyone! Much more evening exercise is in motion; wet food meal before sleep; classical music off the radio all night in the sitting room, and we are ignoring the meows. After a few nights, already a striking improvement - last night he didn't make a sound all night long! Hurrah!!!

Yeah! TCS scores again! Glad to hear it!