Morning meowing--wakes us up

[morik]

Hi all,

We have two cats. One of them is very well behaved, the other is quite a trouble maker: knocks over garbage cans (with just tissues--we don't put food in cans he can reach), pulls them all out. Always jumping up on things he isn't supposed to be on (kitchen counter/dining room table). Loves my wife to death, but also stalks and attacks her at night if I am not nearby (when she is about to go to bed/leave him for the night).

She is allergic to cats (not enough to get rid of them), so can't sleep with them, so we leave them out of the bedroom. Every morning, far before we would rather be waking up, he starts meowing.

She usually wakes up at 6:50 or so, and used to feed the cats in the morning. I usually get up at 9 or so, and have been feeding them instead, hoping that it was the food he was meowing for.

For the most part this has worked, but on some days I get up at 7:45 and have to leave by 8:30, so I feed them earlier. Now the meowing cat has taken to starting to meow starting anywhere from 6 am to 9 am. On weekends when we want to sleep in until 9:30 or 10 its very annoying. On weekdays when I don't want to get up until 9, its annoying to be woken up at 7:30 or 8 am.

We have tried:

  - putting a vacuum cleaner on a remote controlled power plug in the hall outside our bedroom door. It worked for a little while, but now he is used to it--he runs away briefly when we turn it on, and then just comes back.

  - scolding him--he will rub up against us when we open the door. I've tried waiting until right after a meow, throwing open the door, and startling him with a very loud "BAD CAT!". If I get up and open the door anytime within a few days of doing that, he runs down the stairs immediately instead of rubbing up against me. If I go back to bed after opening the door, he just comes back.

  - ignoring him--he just keeps meowing, until we get up.

  - not feeding them right when we get up, in the hopes that it is the food that he is so insistent about. But he seems perfectly content to just sit by us once one of us gets up. (Well, half the time if I get up he'll go meow for my wife to get up, as he is pretty attached to her. I have to go physically carry him away, or scold him, go get him to stop.)

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[stephanietx]

There is no such thing as "sleeping in" when you are owned by cats!  Cats thrive on a schedule and routine.  They are used to eating at a certain time and when you're late, they're telling you they're hungry and it's time to do something about it.  This is perfectly normal behavior. 

I would get up, feed them, then go back to bed. 

 

[catmom5]

There are timed feeders for both dry and wet food. Perhaps that might help if the reason your cat is waking you up is because he's hungry. It also sounds like he needs a bit more activity (ie play time or cat tree near a window) to work off his energy. A squirt bottle with water or can with coins to rattle sometimes work if you "get them" when they are doing something wrong. Cats can be trained.

Yelling at a cat, punishing a cat or striking a cat will do nothing but increase stress and possibly aggression.

I live with several cats and know how nice it would be to sleep in and get up on MY schedule, but we have worked it out. Hope you will be able to also.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Yup.  Cats are like babies and toddlers in that regard.  They like the routine.  We can feed a cat and go back to bed without fully waking up if we have to.  I used to be able to get up, walk across the house to let the cats into the garage at my parents (when I was in high school/college) and go back to bed without missing a beat.  Those 2 boogers I had back then would also go in and out of my room several times a night.  Fortunately my DH is a morning person so he gets up close to their normal time anyway.  But every so often, like after we come home from traveling, we get all that in the middle of the night.  It's like they bang on our bedroom door.  We also do not sleep with them because DH is allergic.  I think some cats are just more persistent than other when it comes to things like this.  Probably not what you wanted to hear.  Maybe someone else will have some ideas.

 

[morik]

We never feed them at 6:30, 7, 7:30, 8, etc... never before 8:30 am. But he starts meowing sometimes at 6:30 in the morning.

I can't go back to sleep if I get up to feed them--it would fully wake me up.

We have a cat tree next to a window.

We have a window sill next to an open (well, un-blinded--the glass is open/visible) window the cats like to look out.

One issue with the timed feeder is that the cats are on a diet. They weighed 22 & 24lbs, which the vet said was too much... they are down to 18 & 21 lbs (over 10 months or so). The well behaved one steals the noisy one's wet food, and the noisy one steals the well behaved one's dry food, if we don't watch them while they eat. (We used to free feed from the same bowl, so they were used to eating together, and don't seem to guard their food so well from each other.)

Even when we free fed them, the noisy one would meow sometimes, but not anything like he does now, so it probably is the food.

 

[stephanietx]

It doesn't matter that you don't feed him at those times.  It's that you're normally up at those times and that's what his routine is.  I normally wake up around 5:45 and the kitties get fed around 6:30AM.  However, sometimes they let us sleep until 7:00AM.  I just get up, feed them, then go back to bed and I'm a morning person!
 

 

[i love ewe]

My cats are like this too. Like clockwork, at 6:45 am my cats jump on top of my chest and meow really loud until they get fed. This has actually saved me a couple of times when I forgot to set the alarm clock for work. Your cats seem to have gotten used to a regular feeding schedule. When my cats wake me too early on the weekends I just put a scoop of food in the bowl and go back to sleep. Sorry I don't have any better tips