- Joined
- Feb 15, 2012
- Messages
- 60
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Hello friends,
For as long as we have had cats, we have fed them twice a day (5:30am and 5pm). For the last few months, one of our cats has started hassling us for food several hours before mealtime, sometimes as early as 3am. He gets our attention in the morning by knocking things off the nighstand onto the floor and in the afternoon by meowing nonstop. He's even doing it right now, yelling at my husband while he's in the shower. Our other cat doesn't act like this. We have tried the following remedies:
1. removing articles from the nightstand and dresser --> he smashes into the lamps
2. locking him out of the bedroom --> he yells into the door loudly
3. feeding him when he gets noisy --> I hate "rewarding" or reinforcing this behavior
4. giving him an afternoon snack --> he still yells afterward for dinner
5. feeding him earlier --> he just starts making noise earlier, and I don't think it's reasonable to get up in the middle of the night to feed a cat
Once he is fed he shuts up, but this is getting ridiculous. He is a wolf-it-all-down-at-once kind of cat, so he can't be trusted to graze or he will just binge and barf. He's a healthy and otherwise well-adjusted cat. What do I do? Please help!
For as long as we have had cats, we have fed them twice a day (5:30am and 5pm). For the last few months, one of our cats has started hassling us for food several hours before mealtime, sometimes as early as 3am. He gets our attention in the morning by knocking things off the nighstand onto the floor and in the afternoon by meowing nonstop. He's even doing it right now, yelling at my husband while he's in the shower. Our other cat doesn't act like this. We have tried the following remedies:
1. removing articles from the nightstand and dresser --> he smashes into the lamps
2. locking him out of the bedroom --> he yells into the door loudly
3. feeding him when he gets noisy --> I hate "rewarding" or reinforcing this behavior
4. giving him an afternoon snack --> he still yells afterward for dinner
5. feeding him earlier --> he just starts making noise earlier, and I don't think it's reasonable to get up in the middle of the night to feed a cat
Once he is fed he shuts up, but this is getting ridiculous. He is a wolf-it-all-down-at-once kind of cat, so he can't be trusted to graze or he will just binge and barf. He's a healthy and otherwise well-adjusted cat. What do I do? Please help!