What is going on with Jordan?? Someone help us!

[yarra]

Since he trys to get at you by jumping at the door when you are in the bathroom, MAYBE there is something in the closet he wants!

Did he leave a toy in there?

Maybe if you left it open a crack for him at night, he might not bang against the door anymore and would stop waking you up.

My kitties are not allowed in the closet. Because 1) I am affraid I will lock them in there all day, and 2) Polly has a love of laundry. and will nest in the folded sweaters and get hair all over everythign!

BUT occasionaly someone leaves the door open a smidge and someone gets in.

I am just sayin, maybe?

 

[huyi]

I have this aswell with my cat, everywhere i go even to just go to the loo she screams at me, and it gets louder and louder and this is when I'm not sleeping when i do sleep she screams on the top of her little lungs early in the morning until I'm awake i take her off the bed but she comes screaming back until shes fed, the only way i can get peace if i put some cat food out before i go to bed and hide it when the cat goes to sleep then in the morning i wont hear anything from her because she will find the food herself in the morning and i can get a good nights sleep.

.

but what i wanted to know is how to stop her wailing during the day, i give her toys, pick her up to stroke her and give her treats but she still won't stop wailing, sometimes i just ignore her and she eventually stops but sometimes when i ignore her, the wailing get louder and longer....

 

[cathyc]

I also have a cat that does this. He wakes me up every morning between 5:30 and 6am. If he can't wake me up by sitting on my stomach and pawing me in the face he starts rattling the blinds or scratching the lamp shade. I can't tell you how many lamps he has broken. He even knocked the lamp on my head one morning. I have had to install lamps that mount on the wall. Now he stands on the headboard and scratches those lampshades as well. The reason my cat does this is that he wants outside. Two of my cats are allowed to go outside for a few hours each day. He does not use the litter box and by early morning he has to go. So whatever it takes to get his Mom up he's gonna do it. Good luck breaking yours of this...I sure haven't had any success.

 

[bab-ush-niik]

If you have tried LITERALLY everything else, try changing the food. That's what it seems to be for my cat.

Oh, and if you think the cat always meowing around 4 is weird, you should hear Puppy. He meows on the hour! Puppy meows, we roll over, and the clock says 1:00. Next time it's 2:59. Then 4:01. Then 5:00. Really weird...

 

[beccory]

I have this same problem- however, my cat is 12 years old and LONG out of kittenhood, and we can't tire her out with playing because- get this- she DOESN'T PLAY. ever. We have toys, we have catnip mice, she likes them and will occasionally chew on them, but doesn't play. So there's no way to tire her out. I'm pretty sure she wants food but she knows she doesn't get fed until 7 am. I'm hoping we can get another cat and she'll keep the new cat up all night instead of us.

 

[katydid]

Although there seems to be more questions than answers in this thread, it's so far fairly helpful. However...well, just read my story.

I have two cats. Athena and Sarai. They are littermates, almost a year and a half old. Rescued by a local organization at 3 weeks (the mother is feral) and my boyfriend and I adopted at 8 weeks. They had no adjustment problems for the first year, and were perfect angels. Now, while Athena is still an angel, Sarai has become neurotic. She meows/whines around 9am (I'm a bartender and he's a programmer, so we work late, and they follow our schedule pretty well) and won't stop until someone gets up and gives her attention.

During the day, while I'm trying to study and my boyfriend is trying to work, she whines while she plays, "talking" to her toys. If one of us tries to play with her, or put her next to us for petting, she jumps off and runs away, only to come back in a bit and start the whole thing over. When one of us gets up to use the bathroom, she follows us, and if she doesn't make it there before us, lays in front of the door and whines while scratching to be let in.

She has many toys that are switched up on occasion to keep them "new", always has food in her dish(dry, no wet food because they get addicted to it and bug us all the time), and I live in a brownstone apartment in NYC, so the vacumn idea isn't exactly feasible. If I let her in the bedroom, she gets up on the dresser and knocks things over.

I'd love to break her of this, because her neurosis means we have to put Athena outside the bedroom, and she loves sleeping with us. I hate to think I'm punishing one cat for the other's problems.

 

[lookingglass]

Thank you so much for the advice in this thread. I'm going to put it to use so I can get a full nights sleep!

 

[lookingglass]

The vacuum cleaner thing WORKS! Thank you SO much!

 

[generic war]

I have a similar problem (which was actually why I was surfing for cat advice forums lol)
my cat Mecha is 7 months old and used to sleep through the night till we got up but doesnt anymore.
Anywhere between 5 am to 7 am she is up, she doesnt really want attention though she just wants me awake, she will climb onto everything and do anything that she knows will wake me up and when I put her into her room she meows loudly, cries and then runs into stuff making as much noise as possible.
Once I'm up she'll hapily go and do her own thing, but not if I'm asleep lol

 

[teach]

Spencer refuses to sleep through the night BUT there are many nights he 100% refuses to even go down stairs! I've tried everything and I'm at the end of my rope. PLEASE HELP!!

 

[jayne1955]

If Magic doesn't stop being so vocal, my husband is going to make us get rid of him. Locking him in the basement is not helping much because Mischief sits outside the basement door and bangs on it trying to spring his new friend, which doesn't help us get much sleep either. I'm really hoping when Magic gets spayed he'll quit some of the yowling. I can't figure out why he is making so much noise. He seemed to be settling in so well. And the weird thing is, for such a noisy cat, he does not purr. I've never had a cat who cried so much, but never purred.

 

[nance]

WOW..so many tired ppl because of their cats...that includes myself..I have 5 cats but only one named Scooter can be a royal pain in the butt in the early am....she does alot....she gets on my pillow and chews my hair right off at times...lol...Years back I couldn't figure out what was going on with my hair at the top of my head..these short little stubby hairs sticking out....I figured it outta and I am totally aware and wake up the second she does it...But she still does it yrs later...I push her off the bed...I tap her on the nose....nothing works...and the whole time she does this she purrs loud...My fav is when she jumps from the top of the headboard right on the my stomach when I am 100% asleep... She lies on my chest I hate that cause eventually I wake up and she gets heavy...while lying on my chest she reaches out and scratches my face...When we lock her outta the bedroom..she meows and the door and pulls on the bottom of it non stop...My b/f I think actually hates the cat....he put this icey hot back rub that the under the door.the cat hates the smell...its actually stops her from pulling at the bottom of the door but we ran out....and it didn't help his back so we never bought it again....This cat actually will pee on my b/f's shoes and clothes he leaves them on the floor....I think cats will do things to spite ya..some ppl don't think so but whatelse could be going on with that peeing..I'm at a loss on whatelse to try....

 

[jayne1955]

My husband would be in total sympathy with the bf. We got a rubber door stop and shove it under the door tightly so the cat can't rattle the door but we can still hear him yowling. I said I was trying to get advice on what to do with him, and my husband wanted to know if anyone had said, "Let him go!" yet. I said no such luck.

 

[motogato]

This trick worked for me but I'm a night person so my schedule helped. Before going to bed (at 3am) I would give my cat a little extra attention and feed him. The attention was probably more effective than the food. It made him less needy of waking me prematurely for another fix.

Another thing, maybe most important: I stopped disturbing him while he was sleeping. As cute as he looked, I started resisting the urge to stroke him while he was asleep. Cats can be retaliatory.

 

[runekeeper]

My one male began howling at night around when he turned nine and he was made to stay in the garage at night. His sister began howling for him soon after, so then she was put in the garage. So for the last four or five years, the cats have been made to stay in the garage all night because they howl and wake everyone up and then everyone starts screaming at one another and trying to kick the cats.

But the garage isn't too bad. I set up several sleeping spots for them, and I built them a makeshift kitty condo out of old cages and blankets. They have two bowls each of food (kibbles) and water, four litter boxes and some stuff to play with. And it's nice and warm in the garage since the furnace is in there. And the spot my female has commandeered is right near the window where the sun comes in perfectly, so she's often sunning herself.

Nothing I did made these cats stop whining. So they have to stay in the basement/garage. If they didn't whine, they might have been able to stay out. But it's either they stay in the garage and remain in one piece, or they howl all night and risk getting kicked down the stairs by my angry, tired mother and her stupid angry boyfriend.

 

[feralvr]

Originally Posted by hissy

Ari- sad to say but you have one spoiled kitty.

Cats run on different cycles than we humans do. They prey at night and early in the morning, this is when mice, birds and other sources of protein are out and about. You can't change their instinct, and we have been trying for centuries. Although they are not as wild as they used to be, they still respond to different stimuli, hear things that are unseen to us.

So what you do, is your re-program Jordan gradually. This will not happen overnight but it will happen. You can find this article might help-

Night Crazies

Also since very little sleep makes us cranky and sometimes that crankiness flows over to the cat causing us to lose sleep- set Jordan up with a nice little room to sleep-over in. Make it as comfortable as possible, if it is a spare bedroom, turn it into a cat room by pulling some of the drawers out of dressers and making a big cave he can explore. Put in a cat condo www.felinefurniture.com has wonderful condos that encourage even the laziest cat to jump and explore. Play harp music at night in the room to lull him to sleep or get a sound machine that plays soothing noises and put that in there. Burn night lights at night in that room so he isn't in total darkness.

Best way to keep a cat out of your bedroom, park your vacuum in front of your door. Run the plug underneath the door, leave the machine on, if kitty "knocks" on the door, get out of bed, plug in the machine 2 seconds then unplug.

Hope this helps-

Wow, thanks Hissy for the new tool for my toolbox. The vacuum cleaner outside the door.

I also have spoiled cats. Presely lately has been meowing and pouncing on me at about 4:30 a.m. So I know I have to re-train his internal clock somehow. I have been thinking of putting him in the "kitty bedroom" with Magilla at night. Presley and Magilla are quite close and Presley is the only one Magilla plays with. Making up a "kitty bedroom" is a good fix for our kitties with the early morning crazies.

 

[aero]

Wow, it's always amazing to me that so many people will allow cats or other animals to become such a nuisance. I always put our cat in the garage at night because he would otherwise wake us early in the morning. If he meows to come in, I spray him. Works great for us.

 

[lunasmommy8]

THANK YOU!

Luna is driving me nutso at night - mostly because we just moved into a new place, but the suggestions and the article that was mentioned will help greatly.

From what I can see, we should:

Play heavily with our cat right before bed for an extended time;

leave doors and other potentially noisy things open or up/out of the way,

feed a high protein meal immediately before bed;

don't touch a cat while it's sleeping (didn't think about this one)

I will start to try all of these. Thanks!