Cat wakes us up - Help!
Carol Miller-Tutzauer
full to bed with you (put it in a drawer near the bed or under
you pillow or something). Have a bowl in your bedroom. When
KitKat meoooooooooows, pour the food, & go back to bed. My
cat Punkin used to do that, but has stopped now that I feed
her just before bedtime. You could also try that.
Carol
Laurel Cheap
>We have a problem with our cat, KitKat. He wakes us up at 4:30 or 5
>am every day wanting breakfast! Any suggestions on how to break this
>habit?
Our cat sometimes wakes us up in the morning to get us to let her
outside. This usually happens on the days it's not raining and
there are birds chirping like crazy outside. When it happens
consistantly, we are firm about not letting her out until we get
up. Just like with kids, if you give in they'll continue to take
advantage of you. We've tried some of the same solutions and find
that a very loud reprimand (like "SHUT UP!") does the trick. If
not, it's followed by a pillow. As long as she knows that she's not
going to get us to get up, she'll be patient. Then she runs to the
nearest door and waits for us to let her out once we're awake.
This is just what worked for us. Sorry I don't have any magical
solutions.
Good luck!
Laurel
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Laurel Cheap University of Washington lch...@cac.washington.edu
Information Systems Seattle, Washington USA I'd rather be in Ireland.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
laura.l.la gassa
or standing politely next to the bed and meowing) about 2 hours after
sunrise. (which is about when the sun gets high enough to notice in my
neighborhood)
In the winter, this isn't a problem.
This time of year, I feed him really late at night (like around midnight
when I go to bed) and then again before I leave for work (about 9:00 am).
It helps somewhat.
I tried not feeding him at all in the am, or only giving him dry food, and
he won -- I'd stumble out half asleep and feed him and fall back into bed
without even opening my eyes.
Laura
Barry Johnson
> We have a problem with our cat, KitKat. He wakes us up at 4:30 or 5
> am every day wanting breakfast! Any suggestions on how to break this
> habit?
>
> we put him on C/D (special dry food for kitties with FUS). He got up
> to 19 pounds before R/D dry and W/D dry became available. R/D is reducing
> diet and W/D is maintenance (low cal) diet. He lost 6 pounds and has
> been maintaining at 12.5 to 13 pounds for over two years now. (This
> is a good weight for him. He is a big cat.) We feed him a mixture
> of R/D and W/D, about 1/3 to 1/2 cup twice a day (breakfast and dinner).
> He always eats it right away, or at least within 1 hour.
>
> We have a baby about 1 year old. I don't exactly remember when KitKat
> started waking us up, but it may have coincided with the baby to some
> extent. (Or maybe I started noticing it more because I started getting
> so much less sleep? :)) We do try to give KitKat some devoted attention
> every day without the baby around, but he _has_ been demoted from his
> former position as number 1 son.
>
> Every morning, KitKat comes in our bedroom, stands next to the bed and
> MIAOWS - VERY LOUDLY until one of us gets up to feed him. I have tried
> a couple of things:
>
> 1. Throw him out of the bedroom and shut the door. This is not
> effective because he just bumps and scratches at the door, and
> still results in one of us getting up.
>
> 2. Throw him out on the screen porch until we are ready to get up.
> This has been somewhat effective in giving us another hour or
> so of sleep. However, it still means getting out of bed to put
> him out, and has not broken the habit. Also, I can't do that
> once the weather gets cold.
>
> 3. Grit my teeth and ignore him. Unfortunately, my spouse has a
> lower tolerance than I, and eventually gets up to feed him anyway.
> So the lesson is still not learned. In fact, he has learned
> that persistence pays off!
>
> 4. Throw a pillow at him. This works for me, but not for my Spouse.
> I think KitKat knows that persistence pays off if my husband
> is home and not traveling somewhere.
>
> HELP!!!
>
> Diane Segelhorst
The only way I have found to circumvent this problem with our Shadow is
to make sure he is awake when we are. If we disturb his naps during the
day, he tends to sleep more at night (when we do) and doesn't want to
get up as early...
Barry...
Diane Segelhorst
elm...@urc.tue.nl
> We have a problem with our cat, KitKat. He wakes us up at 4:30 or 5
> am every day wanting breakfast! Any suggestions on how to break this
> habit?
Try locking him in the bathroom for a few nights. It worked with our cat.
Nicole
Eliot Moss
Our cats are "self-feeding", meaning we just keep a largish bowl out all the
time and keep an appropriate amount of food in it. Some cats will overeat this
way. We found the solution to be to ration what was put in the bowl, and let
the four cats work it out as to who was hungriest, but this may not work for
everybody. We do fill the bowl in the evening so that the food is not liklely
to run out in the night. We know that if we're getting lots of feline
attention in the morning is must be because we forgot to put more food in the
bowl the previous evening.
Having self-feeding cats is also great when you go away for the weekend. You
just put out enough food and water and give them clean litter and they're fine
for a couple of days.
--
J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor
Department of Computer and Information Science
Lederle Graduate Research Center
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
(413) 545-4206, 545-1249 (fax); Mo...@cs.umass.edu
Pete Zakel
>MIAOWS - VERY LOUDLY until one of us gets up to feed him. I have tried
>a couple of things:
Woody used to demand to be fed every morning between 4:00 and 5:00 AM. At
first he jumped up on the bed and miaowed. Then he started attacking hands,
head, anything outside of the covers. So I started throwing him out of the
bedroom and closing the door. He started pounding the door (I think he
would go down the hallway a way and then launch himself at the door -- at
least that's what it sounded like!), so I threw him out of the apartment.
No luck, he knew where my bedroom window was and he'd just sit outside it
and meow as loudly as he could. So I just gave up keeping him out of the
bedroom and just pulled my whole body under the covers when he started
attacking.
Then he learned I couldn't STAND having him knock things off my side table
(where I kept my glasses, pens, watch, etc.) -- so of course he started
knocking things off the table to get my attention. So we compromised,
I'd get up at 4:00 AM and feed him when he demanded, and he let me sleep
once I'd fed him.
He developed a routine about it, too. First, jump up on the bed and meaow
once. Frequently, this was enough to get me up, but if not, after a few
seconds he would pad across the waterbed to the side table. Then he'd wait
a few seconds. If no response he'd knock one thing off the table and then
wait a few seconds more. If still no response, he'd knock something else and
wait a few more seconds until I got up and fed him. Rarely did it take
more than jumping up on the bed and one meaow to get me up.
He was strange about his food, too. As I do with all my cats, each cat gets
one-half of a small can of moist food once each morning and evening. There
is always dry food sitting for in-between hunger (I've *never* had an
overweight cat using this procedure). Woody would *NOT* eat the canned food
unless he saw me putting it into the bowl -- it had to be fresh and he had
to verify it with his own eyes. Also, if I didn't come home at the normal
time for his evening meal, he would panic and eat every bit of dry food left
out. Then he would throw it up on the living room carpet.
Woody's been gone for 6 years and I still miss him. He was the best cat
I've ever been owned by.
-Pete Zakel
(p...@cadence.com or ..!uunet!cadence!phz)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin
Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
LaRocheNJ
> am every day wanting breakfast! Any suggestions on how to break this
> habit?
Any chance you could put him there before you go to bed at night? Maybe by
winter, he's be more accustomed to YOUR schedule for when to get up. Or
you might get one of these heating devices for pets (I use one in my dog's
dog house in the winter) and leave the cat in a small "cat house" on the
screened porch at night all year round.
Nancy LaRoche
att!drutx!njl
Don Allen
>In article <92...@oasys.dt.navy.mil> dseg...@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Diane Segelhorst) writes:
>>We have a problem with our cat, KitKat. He wakes us up at 4:30 or 5
>>am every day wanting breakfast! Any suggestions on how to break this
>>habit?
>
>Our cat sometimes wakes us up in the morning to get us to let her
>outside. This usually happens on the days it's not raining and
>there are birds chirping like crazy outside. When it happens
>consistantly, we are firm about not letting her out until we get
>up. Just like with kids, if you give in they'll continue to take
>advantage of you. We've tried some of the same solutions and find
>that a very loud reprimand (like "SHUT UP!") does the trick. If
>not, it's followed by a pillow. As long as she knows that she's not
>going to get us to get up, she'll be patient. Then she runs to the
>nearest door and waits for us to let her out once we're awake.
>
My wife and I have always looked at this as the eternal problem.
Usually, during the week, since she gets up around 5 am it's normally
not a problem, as our female tabby ("Bess") is ready to eat, go outside
for a few..
Where we have the problem is on the weekends, when you'd rather sleep
late but wait...! The cat is *used* to getting up at the early tim
and she resorts to getting up on a chair next to a window and either
alternately plucking on a window screen..or the venetian blinds..I
will most certainly guarantee that this WILL get you up.
Ok..so you get up and put her food in the dish, and stumble back to
bed..it's saturday morn and you don't have to be anywhere like work.
You manage to drift back to sleep..and then...pluck..pluck..pluck.."I
wanna go out..NOW!"
Does this sound familiar??
If it isn't going *out*..it's wanting back *in*....
The ONLY sure-fire method that I have found to mellow our cat down
and reach some sort of compromise..is to keep a water bottle handy!
I once had a male tabby, that wouldn't pluck..but he would emit a
"cosmic meow" that would wake the dead..he would meow until you
either a) got up and tend to his needs or b) squirt him with a
water pistol until he shut up for awhile..
Cats are funny creatures :-)
Of *all* the nice high places and soft nap inducing areas in my home..
where does my cat want to be at night?
Well...right in FRONT of my keyboard of course! :-)
Don
--
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Sunni ROGERS
>In article <92...@oasys.dt.navy.mil> dseg...@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Diane Segelhorst) writes:
>>Every morning, KitKat comes in our bedroom, stands next to the bed and
>>MIAOWS - VERY LOUDLY until one of us gets up to feed him. I have tried
>>a couple of things:
>
My cat doesn't meow, but she driver me totally nuts in the morning.
She starts at the end of the hallway, gallops to the bedroom like
a herd of elephants, bounds on to the bed, springboards off my feet
and on to the curtains. Then she jumps down on my butt, sprints up
my back, across my head on to the nightstand where she puposely knocks
soemthing off (I've seen her bat things off) then gallops back
down the hallway, waits a few minutes, and repeats the procedure.
I used to think she wanted breakfast, but I have gotten up and given
her food and she still came back if I went back to bed. Soemtimes
I have gotten up and she still had food in her bowl. I think she just does
this for attention. I started closing the bedroom door in the morningg,
but then she sits and play at the door, pushing things under it, scratching
it, etc.
Sunni
Ann Marie Grizzaffi Maynard
>Every morning, KitKat comes in our bedroom, stands next to the bed and
>MIAOWS - VERY LOUDLY until one of us gets up to feed him. I have tried
>a couple of things:
I finally broke my cat of that habit about 6 months ago and since I haven't
seen this solution posted yet I thought I'd share it.
It took a year to figure it out, trying all kinds of crazy things from
getting up and feeding him, to chasing him around the house with a water
sprayer, to locking him in the bathroom for my last two
hours of sleep--He was REALLY making me INSANE!! But now I can SLEEP
in the morning!!!!! It's WONDERFUL!!!!
At night before I got to bed I put a little bowl
of dry cat food and water in the next room farily close to my bedroom door,
then I close the door for the night. At first he kept banging on the door
in the AM to be let in, but he broke the habit after I spent several mornings
in a row just IGNORING the noise. Yes, it was total torture, but
he doesn't bother me anymore and I'm a much happier morning person. ;)
Now in the morning he just feeds himself and then goes back to sleep!
(The method worked because by ignoring him I seemed to remove the one thing
from the scenario that encouraged him to keep it up--ATTENTION!!)
(Unfortunately, this didn't help the orginal poster whose cat had a habit of
eating everything in sight immediately after she put it down. But it might
help others!)
@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@
| |
@ Ann Marie Grizzaffi Maynard @
| Carnegie Mellon University a...@mast.ece.cmu.edu |
@ @
| They say once you drink the waters of Puerto Rico |
@ you never want to leave!!! @
| |
@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@
Pamela Pincha-Wagener
>In article <1991Jul18.2...@cadence.com> p...@cadence.com (Pete Zakel) writes:
>>In article <92...@oasys.dt.navy.mil> dseg...@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Diane Segelhorst) writes:
>>>Every morning, KitKat comes in our bedroom, stands next to the bed and
>>>MIAOWS - VERY LOUDLY until one of us gets up to feed him. I have tried
>>>a couple of things:
>>
>My cat doesn't meow, but she driver me totally nuts in the morning.
>She starts at the end of the hallway, gallops to the bedroom like
>a herd of elephants, bounds on to the bed, springboards off my feet
>and on to the curtains. Then she jumps down on my butt, sprints up
>my back, across my head on to the nightstand where she puposely knocks
>soemthing off (I've seen her bat things off) then gallops back
>down the hallway, waits a few minutes, and repeats the procedure.
It sounds like she's got what we call her "hunting tapes" in. We noticed that
when the cats are inside, every once in a a while they get these rather
instinctive hunting/playing activity spurts where they seem to practice
they hunting skills - running, quick turns, stalking, pouncing, etc.etc.
After a short while of intense activity they collapse for a while.
(Unless of course they've not quite worn themselves out. Then the tape goes
back in for round two. Maybe it's the cats equivalent of hunting aerobics?)
>I used to think she wanted breakfast, but I have gotten up and given
>her food and she still came back if I went back to bed. Soemtimes
>I have gotten up and she still had food in her bowl. I think she just does
>this for attention. I started closing the bedroom door in the morningg,
>but then she sits and play at the door, pushing things under it, scratching
>it, etc.
We solved the problem by not allowing the cats in the bedroom. It's our
territory and it's VERBOOTEN to the four footed sorts. They get the
rest of the house. We did this by using a long distance squirt bottle
with water, a judicial amount of hissing (I can "hiss" with the best of
them. When they hear "Mom" hiss they drop everything....) and use
a code word that to them means "out of Mom's territory" (using "out"
would just confuse them when we want them to go outside, so we use
the German word "weck" (it means out!) The secret is to think and act
like a cat, and act immediately upon them doing something you don't
want them to do. The other secret is to be consistent. If the bedroom
is off limits, it's off limits -- just letting them in now and then
confuses the heck out of them.
As for scratching at the door, a few abushes with the squirt bottle
and a hiss with a sharp "weck" also gets the point across that the
door is off limits too. Just be consistent. Within a month she should
get the idea. Then it's a matter of occasional reinforcement of the
training.
She may also be bored in the morning. What we have also done is rotate
what toys are out for the cats. A favorite is the cat box. It's a
3-4" thick cardboard box with holes cut into the top. The holes
are just large enough for a cat to get a paw in and move it a little.
Inside the box is a ping-pong ball, or a waded paper ball, or a
catnip toy just a touch to big to pull out of the holes. Our cats
love to bat the toys around with their paws inserted nearly up to
their chinny chin chins. Our youngest brings his favorite paper
ball of the day and stuffs it in and bats at it for hours. It works
wonders.
Basically to train a cat you either encourage an activity they already
like to do or you change the environment so that they don't want to be
there. Above all, watch carefuly what they are doing. Decide what it
is you don't want them to do (or what you do want them to do) and plan
what you are going to do to acheive it. Then put your plan into effect,
but remember BE CONSISTENT!
Good luck.
Pam Pincha-Wagener