KItty starts meowing at 4:00am every morning,

[danancinder]

Hi everyone, I am new not only here but to cats.  After having dogs my whole life my daughter convinced me to give cats a try.  Not one to do anything half way we adopted two, a 1 year old and a 4 year old about 3 months ago.  They have bonded well with each other, grooming, playing, and cuddling together most of the day.  We put them out of the bedrooms at night because they were having wrestling matches on the bed most of the night.  Now the little one starts meowing in the hall at 4am every day.  have tried getting up and feeding, opening the doors to let them in, talking to her, petting her but she just continues to go back to the hall and meow until we are up for the day.  We are both exhausted, any ideas what is going on and how to get her to be quiet?

 

[luvzmykatz]

This is very common for cats.  My 15 year old has done this since I got him my 5 year old not so much.   Cats are twilight animals and are most active sometimes right around dawn or at sunset.   The worst thing you can do is respond to their meows it only encourages them to continue the behavior.   If you ignore them long enough they may learn to stop if not you can keep them in a basement or another room for the night.   Mine don't do it that often anymore I turn on a window fan to cover the noise and ignore them that way.  I'd say mine still try to wake me up at 4-5 am at least 1 out of 7 days in the week.   For the most part they've learned that waking me up is only going to get them locked out of the bedroom....lol   I also feed them on a strict schedule twice a day.  Once when I get up around 6:30am or 7am and when I get home from work 6pm to 9pm.

 

[callista]

Earplugs, stick your head under the covers, and shove the cat off the bed when she gets too annoying. Cats may be awake at night, but humans are not, and they need to learn that if they bug you at night, they're only going to get ignored by a grumpy, sleepy human!

 

[sivyaleah]

Thankfully, ours is pretty good for the most part although he has his moments.  The other morning, around 4:30 am, he found something on the floor and was flying around like a bat out of hell in the hallway chasing it down.  Turned out to be the packaging from one of my migraine pills that fell off my bedside!  My BF and I just ignored it because we knew he'd stop after a few minutes. And he did.  If we had started giving him attention, he certainly would have found something else to annoy us with.

We also have noticed that since we started to feed him at night (he gets high quality kibble most of the time), his nocturnal annoyances have dramatically dropped off.  We think much of it was tied to the fact that he was getting hungry for breakfast around that hour or a bit later (5ish or so) but now that his meal schedule begins at 8pm, instead of 6am (when I was getting up), he has most of his food available later in the day to get him through the hours he is most active.  Every morning when I get up there is still plenty of food in the bowl now whereas before, he would be crawling all over me by the time I'd get down to the kitchen.  Now, I wake up and he usually is even ignoring me or even better - sleeping on his pillow in the office window!  Sometimes, even dead asleep on the bed with us

 

[rubberboots]

Our male (Pekoe) would sit outside our bedroom door and do that. We purchased some sscats (great invention by the way) and set them outside the bedroom door and it sort of worked lol. He stopped for about a month but then he figured out the range of these things and now he sits just outside of their range and meows but he doesn't meow as loud anymore and also being farther away he hardly ever wakes us up anymore.
 

 

[danancinder]

Update, much better now.  As I learn more about kitties things like this are much easier to deal with.  We now exhaust them right before bed time.  They are both play hounds, loving the feather wands, so we play until they drop, feed them and go to bed.  They are both usually out for the night along with us.  Good night sleep had by all

 

[jackie celko]

Every time you get up with animal in the middle of the night to feed them or pet them it reinforces the behavior.  For the early rising cat, it's a reward.  "If I meow long enough, she'll get up."  I agree with locking the cat out of the bedroom.  If they meow louder or scratch the door, move them to a room further away or briefly crate them.   Do this faithfully, each time they wake you up, and the wak up calls should decrease.  

Another tip is to exercise the cats vigorously to the point of panting and feed them in the evening after their "hunt."  It may help them to sleep through the night.

I once had my two cats trained to no bother me regardless of the time of morning until my eyes opened.  No batting, no meowing, nouthing.  One morning, I felt a light tap on my eyelid.  I opened my eyes and saw a cats paw reaching for my eye.  Apparently, he had decided that if open eyes were the needed for me to get up and be useful, he would open them.  I screamed (claws toward eye), he jumped, and we added a new rule about leaving me alone completely,

 

[catspaw66]

Earplugs, stick your head under the covers, and shove the cat off the bed when she gets too annoying. Cats may be awake at night, but humans are not, and they need to learn that if they bug you at night, they're only going to get ignored by a grumpy, sleepy human!

I usually wake up with either Sugar sitting and staring at me from a few inches away or a furry mouse on my head or next to me.  They have all learned that I will not take any notice of them when I am trying to sleep, except in an emergency.

 

[denise mackie]

So glad I read these posts.  i thought i was being harsh with Lady as she too has the 4a.m's!!!! I've never had a cat do this before so it was new to me, but, as always, i have treated it as I would a child.  Ignore, don't reward and then it became necessary to shut her downstairs with the run of the lounge, kitchen and utility.  She doesn't like it, but I don't like being woken up every night at 4 a.m!!!  i think i will try playing with her tonight, because I actually don't mind her in my bedroom.  Thank you all for reassuring me and giving me some other ideas on how to make us both happy!

 

[kushmama89]

You luck out getting to sleep til 4!! Lol. My girl just turned 12 weeks and shes UP til 2 am running around all crazy like shes just under the limit of o.d.ing on caffine andthen she might sleep for about a half hour to an two hours max if im lucky and be right back up climbing my curtains in my room, scratching my matress, jumping on my face, jumping on the dog cage and rattling it and waking her up and making her whine and doggy talk. And god forbid i go to the bathroom cuz then shes tripping me and biting me while im half asleep and trying to jump in the toilet, ripping toilet paper at 3 am and knocking stuff off my dressers.

Lol. (i have no doors to my upstairs or bedroom. And we rent and cant put any in) darn furbabies!

 

[denise mackie]

Lolololol!!!!!!  Well, she is just a baby.  I guess the trick for you will be to teach her now that she won't be rewarded for this behaviour.  Do you have a room in the house in which she can be safely shut in with access to food, water, litter tray and toys?  If she is left alone for a few nights, she may start to get the message, and then you could maybe introduce her to being allowed more access to the home at night, but every time she misbehaves (well, she's not really misbehaving is she, she is just being a kitten), you put her back in the limited access space, and repeat that without speaking to her, at all, until she gets the message.  Just a suggestion.  I have to say, that last night I allowed Lady upstairs again.  I played with her for half an hour or so before bed, and then fed her.  She went to sleep with me, and it was 6a.m before she woke me up, but I just sent her downstairs and shut the door.  She was fine til I got up a few hours later and has been very loving to me all day.  

Just like children, that is how I treat them, love and kind discipline and everyone is happy,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, or, you could just have a psychotic cat! lolol

 

[kushmama89]

Ya we dont have any closed rooms except our bathroom a d its very tiny. i usually run on between 2-4 hours of sleep within a 24 hr period. Its pretty exhausting especially with a 16 month old and school as well. But i keep on chuggin!

 

[nebula]

Smokie does that, or rather he did. Our cats get fed once in the morning  - and sure enough about 4:30 or 5:00 they are both sitting on the bed meowing. The craziest thing was when Bandit about a week ago, brought his empty bowl into the bed and threw it on my head. I was not a happy meowmy!!!

They seem to learn pretty quickly that food comes once a day. We can't lock them out of the bedroom because it is a folding accordian door that they both know how to open in two seconds flat.

However, we also don't feed until 8 Am.. They have to wait......... if you cater to their temper tantrums, it only reinforces the behavior. They think "Mommy will wake up if I cry long enough and then I will get food"... devious little creatures.

 

 

[matts mom]

Every time you get up with animal in the middle of the night to feed them or pet them it reinforces the behavior.  For the early rising cat, it's a reward.  "If I meow long enough, she'll get up."  I agree with locking the cat out of the bedroom.  If they meow louder or scratch the door, move them to a room further away or briefly crate them.   Do this faithfully, each time they wake you up, and the wak up calls should decrease.  

Another tip is to exercise the cats vigorously to the point of panting and feed them in the evening after their "hunt."  It may help them to sleep through the night.

I once had my two cats trained to no bother me regardless of the time of morning until my eyes opened.  No batting, no meowing, nouthing.  One morning, I felt a light tap on my eyelid.  I opened my eyes and saw a cats paw reaching for my eye.  Apparently, he had decided that if open eyes were the needed for me to get up and be useful, he would open them.  I screamed (claws toward eye), he jumped, and we added a new rule about leaving me alone completely,

We also have noticed that since we started to feed him at night (he gets high quality kibble most of the time), his nocturnal annoyances have dramatically dropped off.  We think much of it was tied to the fact that he was getting hungry for breakfast around that hour or a bit later (5ish or so) but now that his meal schedule begins at 8pm, instead of 6am (when I was getting up), he has most of his food available later in the day to get him through the hours he is most active.  Every morning when I get up there is still plenty of food in the bowl now whereas before, he would be crawling all over me by the time I'd get down to the kitchen.  Now, I wake up and he usually is even ignoring me or even better - sleeping on his pillow in the office window!  Sometimes, even dead asleep on the bed with us

i know that feeding an animal in the middle of the night reinforces the behavior, but after 8months(that's how long we've had him lol) of Matt waking us up every night, sometimes 2 or 3 times a night, by meowing from one end of the house to the other...........having everything including spray bottles ignoring down to locking the wretched animal in the basement lol.......I'm with you sivyaleah. A couple of weeks ago I moved his first feeding of the day to when he wakes me up...I crack open a tin, take his food downstairs and shut the door on my way up.........and get a good night's rest 

  Everyone is happier

 

[orientalslave]

...

Cats are twilight animals and are most active sometimes right around dawn or at sunset. 

...

There's a wonderful word for this - crepuscular.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepuscular