cats beg and follow husband around meowing/wake us up at 4 am!!

HELP!!  I have 4 cats =2 of them seem fixated on food.  I stopped the kibble thinking it was what made them addicted and they just wouldnt stop eating and gained a lot of weight.  Over a period of several months I got them onto wet food and have fed them 4 meals a day of a 5.5 oz can of food and some warm water on each meal.  It seems after an hour or so they just beg and beg.  Now they wake us up at 4 am with the meowing and begging.  If this doesnt stop I dont know what to do.  We are so short of sleep.  I am hoping maybe someone has some experience with this.  Saying NO loudly doesnt work.  I dont want to feed them more.  They are getting closer to ideal weight.  I am so fed up with them I just dont know what to try next!!  I love them with all my heart==but this has become really bad the past few months.  I hope people may have suggestions==any help is surely appreciated. 

How old are they?

What works for me is to feed my cats three times a day with canned food and then put about 1/2 cup of kibble out over night.  I only have 2 cats, so it would be double that amount for you.  If you don't want to give them kibble at all, you might buy an automatic feeder and set the timer for shortly before 4:00 AM and give them their 4th canned food meal then.  

Before I figured out to leave a little kibble at night, I would be exhausted at work the next day.   I completely sympathize!  

You can get automatic feeders that come with ice packs, so that you can put wet food in them if you aren't setting them too far ahead. The other thing you might try is cutting their feeding times to twice a day, so they're getting 11oz at each feeding, and scheduling the second feed for close to your own bedtime. Or even one feed of 22oz a day, close to bedtime. I found that the early morning looking for food stopped when I made sure they had a nice big meal at night.

My kitties have definitely gotten more content if there is kibble available. Sometimes I wake up earlier than I want to but I won't feed them before 6am. They won't even try it now. They will pounce the moment I get up, that I know. But they won't bother me before then.

And as far as waking me up, they did for awhile when I first started feeding them in the morning, which was a fairly recent thing. Wanted to add more canned in their diet Started off with me doing it as a treat and after one time, they said it was a new ritual :lol3:

talkingpeanut said:

How old are they?

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The young beggars are 4 y/o  The other old kitties are 10 and 15.  They dont participate so much in the begging.  The 15 yo is starting it but I think he learned it from the other 2 4 yo boys. 

Donutte said:

My kitties have definitely gotten more content if there is kibble available. Sometimes I wake up earlier than I want to but I won't feed them before 6am. They won't even try it now. They will pounce the moment I get up, that I know. But they won't bother me before then.

And as far as waking me up, they did for awhile when I first started feeding them in the morning, which was a fairly recent thing. Wanted to add more canned in their diet Started off with me doing it as a treat and after one time, they said it was a new ritual

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I dont want to start up the kibble again--they eat and eat and eat kibble and then when the dish is empty they run to the kitchen every time someone walks into the kitchen!!  They get the first meal at 6 am.  then lunch at noon and supper at 6 PM and I give them the last meal at 1100 when I go to bed.  So they are NOT hungry!  It is a behavioral thing.=they are quiet all day when I am home alone w them and then they are terrible from the moment my husband gets home until he goes to bed.  I think he needs NOT to be the food person.  I wonder if I just fed them iif some of it would stop. 

Margd said:

 
What works for me is to feed my cats three times a day with canned food and then put about 1/2 cup of kibble out over night.  I only have 2 cats, so it would be double that amount for you.  If you don't want to give them kibble at all, you might buy an automatic feeder and set the timer for shortly before 4:00 AM and give them their 4th canned food meal then.  

Before I figured out to leave a little kibble at night, I would be exhausted at work the next day.

  I completely sympathize!  

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We are exhausted-thats for sure!!  I hate to start any kibble again==they were really fat when the ate kibble.  They overate it to the point of obesity.  I had them down to good weights for them and husband started adding food and now they have put some weight back on.  I mostly want to feed canned food =it seems to hold them longer.  This has been so frustrating. 

caitini said:

 
You can get automatic feeders that come with ice packs, so that you can put wet food in them if you aren't setting them too far ahead. The other thing you might try is cutting their feeding times to twice a day, so they're getting 11oz at each feeding, and scheduling the second feed for close to your own bedtime. Or even one feed of 22oz a day, close to bedtime. I found that the early morning looking for food stopped when I made sure they had a nice big meal at night.

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There are 4 of them so I dont know if an autofeeder would work-I think the more aggressive younger ones would get most of the food and the 2 older ones wouldnt!!  Maybe I need to arrange it so they get a bigger meal at bedtime then.  It sure might be something to try. 

dmk129 said:

 
We are exhausted-thats for sure!!  I hate to start any kibble again==they were really fat when the ate kibble.  They overate it to the point of obesity.  I had them down to good weights for them and husband started adding food and now they have put some weight back on.  I mostly want to feed canned food =it seems to hold them longer.  This has been so frustrating. 

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Kibble has lots of fillers, so is less of a meal for them for sure.  I think you're doing the right thing with the wet food, and I wouldn't let your husband feed them anymore.  I also think a larger meal at bedtime may hurt.

My cats used to waken me early hours of the morning. I changed their feeding pattern and it sorted it. They have their evening meal late: about 11pm just before I go to bed and they tend to sleep thro the night with full happy tummies : (
They have a handful of biccies when I get home late afternoon to tide them over til their late evening meal. And for evening meal wet food plus a few biccies.

I can't leave food out all the time cos my female cat Mischa tends to plumpness and guzzles the lot fast as she can! So they have 3 meals a day - a meal at breakfast time when I get up usually just biscuits, sometimes a bit of wet food too at weekends as a treat. Then the small amount biccies late afternoon and then the evening meal.
It used to be hell for my sleep being woken up by demanding insistent yowling until I twigged that they snooze deeply after their supper...so changed the mealtime by a few hours.

I started adding a small amount of wild salmon oil to the biscuit kibbles a few months ago and greedy miss Mischa does not seem as desperate for food all the time and even leaves the odd biccie in her bowl. My partner says she seems more satisfied.
Hope this helps!

thanks for the suggestions!  I am going to try feeding a larger meal at bedtime so maybe it will hold them through the night better.  Maybe they wont get up so early then!!  Heres hoping!! 

When I first adopted Ruby from the shelter she was food obsessed.   She would eat everything in her dish at one sitting, so her dish was always empty.  And she was always hungry!

She would wake me every morning sometime between 4:30 and 5:30 demanding breakfast.  I would try ignoring her till my radio alarm came on at 6, but she was persistent, and I wouldn't get back to sleep.  So like you, I soon started feeling sleep-deprived.

Finally I started getting up and putting her out of the room and shutting the bedroom door when she'd wake me.  I'd also tell her she had to wait for the radio to come on.

Eventually she got the hint and one morning the radio woke me and then I heard a cat galloping into the room and onto the bed. From that day on she has waited for the clock radio to come on before waking me looking for breakfast.  Some mornings she is still asleep on the bed or under the covers when the radio comes on and I stir before she does.

So cats can adjust to new feeding routines.  It does take a while though.  Good luck.

rubysmama said:

 
When I first adopted Ruby from the shelter she was food obsessed.   She would eat everything in her dish at one sitting, so her dish was always empty.  And she was always hungry!

She would wake me every morning sometime between 4:30 and 5:30 demanding breakfast.  I would try ignoring her till my radio alarm came on at 6, but she was persistent, and I wouldn't get back to sleep.  So like you, I soon started feeling sleep-deprived.

Finally I started getting up and putting her out of the room and shutting the bedroom door when she'd wake me.  I'd also tell her she had to wait for the radio to come on.

Eventually she got the hint and one morning the radio woke me and then I heard a cat galloping into the room and onto the bed. From that day on she has waited for the clock radio to come on before waking me looking for breakfast.  Some mornings she is still asleep on the bed or under the covers when the radio comes on and I stir before she does.

So cats can adjust to new feeding routines.  It does take a while though.  Good luck.

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we dont have a bedroom door!  House has a lot of arched doorways and open concept==otherwise they would have been confined to an area away from the bedroom a while ago!  Yes==they are persistent.  Ours DO know alarm means people UP.  Thats what they want.  People OUT of bed.  But 4 and 5 am is a bit early for us.  We get up more like 6am.  They always push it earlier.  They are Siamese so are noisy kitties anyway.  They sit in front of my husband at night and beg =they sit on the floor in front of the couch and meow.  He gets really frustrated with them.  They only do it to him.  Never to me. 

After the practically sleepless nights I've had recently with one of mine that meows in my face all night, I was contemplating a large cotton ball and some superglue, and not for my ears!  LOL!  Kidding of course, but I can relate to the frustration and exhaustion!  XD

Sadly, the only answer to this is totally ignoring the behavior.  Eventually, it will slow and stop as the cats realize that there won't be a payoff.  It take time.  And perseverance.  And occasionally a shot of brandy,..for you, not the cats.  Best of luck.  I've been there, done that.  Had the tee shirt, but Hekitty appropriated it and uses it for a bed.

dmk129 said:

 
we dont have a bedroom door! 

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Well that rules out my "close the bedroom door" suggestion! 

My other suggestion would be to totally ignore them.  Don't move, don't make a sound,  well unless they are standing on your face. 

My last suggestion would be to get up, feed them, and hope you get back to sleep.  But that could backfire with them coming in earlier and earlier looking for breakfast, and then coming back for seconds, all before it's time for you to get up!

What brand of food are you feeding them? Even some wet foods use fillers too generously. My cat was ravenous when she was fed a wet food that contained potato starch, even though she was gaining weight. Switching to a food with more protein helped keep her fuller longer.

dmk129 said:

I dont want to start up the kibble again--they eat and eat and eat kibble and then when the dish is empty they run to the kitchen every time someone walks into the kitchen!!  They get the first meal at 6 am.  then lunch at noon and supper at 6 PM and I give them the last meal at 1100 when I go to bed.  So they are NOT hungry!  It is a behavioral thing.=they are quiet all day when I am home alone w them and then they are terrible from the moment my husband gets home until he goes to bed.  I think he needs NOT to be the food person.  I wonder if I just fed them iif some of it would stop. 

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Interesting that you say they start to beg when your husband gets home. My Siamese is the same way but is getting better. I feed him when I get home from work at 4 pm and he's quiet the rest of the night until my hubby gets home at 11pm. I think my hubby is the lenient one and kitty caught on. Hubby will feed him but he would beg non stop. One trick that works for us is to turn off the kitchen light. I tell him "kitchens closed" and turn the light off. It's helped.

Hi dmk129 just wondering how it's going and if kitties still waking you up during the night?