Scratching the bed while we sleep-help!!

My cat Baxter is an 8 month old neutered male. For the most part, he is a well behaved cat, but he has recently developed an unfortunate habit that is about to drive my SO and me out of our minds.

In the late night/early morning hours, he has taken to coming to the side of the bed and incessantly scratching the material on the box spring. He does NOT do this at all during the day, only at night while we are sleeping. Also, he has a couple of turbo scratchers which he does use often. He doesn't scratch any other furniture.

Nothing has worked, not firm "no"s, not clapping, not gently pushing him away. If we get frustrated enough to put him out of the room, he sits outside the door and yowls.

I'm pretty sure he is trying to wake me up for some reason or another, I don't know if its because he's hungry (I doubt it though-he always gets a little bit of kibble before bed) or if he just wants companionship. I'm suspecting the latter, because the minute I get so frustrated I get out of bed, he goes and falls asleep!

Any advice would be soooo appreciated!

My cousin took some Glad Press and Seal and stuck it to the areas she did not want her kitten scratching, she says it works great.

My cats do this as well...... and it drives me NUTS!!!!They have got the sides of my boxsprings looking awful.I have bought some Sticky Paws and am going to put them on there and see if that helps.
Maybe you could get some of those and try it as well.
Good luck....I feel your pain.LOL.

If it matters, Nano used to do this for a couple of weeks...and it mysteriously stopped when she finally got up the nerve to join me/us in bed. Now she quietly lays in her area of the bed and doesn't scratch the boxsprings. Anyway, just adding my $0.02 that it is almost certainly an "attention" thing.

Chloe does it too when she thinks we should be up - which is, unfortunately, around 4:00 AM. We give her a chance to settle down and if that doesn't work then we put her outside the room. Usually she'll quiet down, but if not I've found that one of Hissy's tips works for us:

"Take your vaccuum cleaner and park it outside your bedroom door. Have the on switch activated, run the plug under the door and ready to plug into an outlet. When she starts scratching, plug in the machine just seconds, then uplug- It usually only takes once. Keep the machine parked outside at night like a soldier guarding your room.

Also be sure that she has toys, and a cat condo in another room where she can go to sleep. You can also play with her about 20 minutes before bedtime interactively and then follow it up with a nice bowl of canned food. That will help her sleep at night-

Oh, and don't trip over your vaccuum in the middle of the night!"

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice, everyone.

What we ended up doing is buying a roll of Contact paper and attaching it sticky side up to the box spring with double sided tape. It has worked like a charm thus far-he tapped it once with his paw and recoiled, didn't like it one bit.

He still comes up on the bed to snooze at his leisure, which we are fine with, but he's dropped the scratching for now, knock wood.