Since moving here to West Virginia, Chris has become quite the pain at night. Not that he wasn’t before but now he is worse. Chris is too annoying to allow in our room at night so we close all the cats out of our bedroom when we go to bed. At our Florida home, Chris learned to accept this and was usually quiet until around 4 a.m. or so. Here, he is quite different.
I have water and food bowls upstairs and downstairs for the cats. The food is usually empty except for a small amount a few times a day. I save one of those times for bedtime and I draw Chris out of the room with kibble and then close the bedroom door and go to bed.
The quiet lasts until Chris is done eating and then there is a constant scratching at the door and crying. The cry is almost a howl and it sound so sad and pathetic, as well as annoying, that I feel like I need to let him in, if only for a little while.
So lately I look at it like sleep training. When he starts his nails in the face routine I move him down to my feet. Sometimes that works for an hour or two and sometimes he is back in fifteen seconds. Never had I made it through the night with Chris. Sometime between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. I have to get up and put him out the door along with any other cat in the room.
I think what irks me the most is once Rose and I are awake and up for the day, that is when Chris decides to go to sleep on our bed.
I feel like sleep training will never work so I should probably give up and just ignore him, but it is equally difficult to sleep with him out there making all that noise. Plus, he is ruining the door.
same here.. … I ponder at 3 am about having a gold fish … and during the day when I waddle around like a zombie they go to bed…
🙂
Heh. That brought back a childhood memory for me. I had goldfish as a kid. The small tank was kept in the kitchen. I remember my dad telling me that I had the loudest goldfish he’d ever heard. He said “Those little things sound like whales, splashing around in that water!” 😂
Gold fish, gold cat. Do you see the connection?
Hey. Good point.
Sounds like he’s trying to get you and Rose to abandon the bed during the night so HE can have it to sleep. LOL Seriously though, you have a great big house in W. VA maybe a downstairs room that you can put a baby gate up (not a scratchable door) to keep him in at night. With beds, food/water maybe he would learn to behave until you and Rose get up in the morning when he can have “his” bed back! LOL On the other hand, knowing Chris, he’d not let a baby gate stop him.
Hugs, Pam
They are cats, the jump over those
I considered that before and thought about putting one on top of another.
Before we adopted Chris, he graduated from locksmith school. My mother is coming here tomorrow. She sold her house in Arizona and will be closing on another house there soon. In the meantime she is homeless and is travelling and visiting family. I bring this up because she is bringing me my Dad’s slot machine. Somehow the key got lost for it so I am going to see if Chris can open it. 🙂
Well if anyone can open it – Chris can!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
I was thinking the same. Big house. Many rooms. Couldn’t there be a designated cat room for your sleep time…say, upstairs where caterwauling can’t be heard? Metal kick plates on doors?
That might be a good idea but I would feel back locking him up.
You’ve had to lock him out of the bedroom before. Disturbed sleep is not healthy for you.
I’m okay with locking him out but not locking him up.
Now what I wonder is who is sleep training who as it seems Chris has you trained quite well. MOL Rumpy was our nighttime bug when he arrived and if not bothering Dad it was another cat. It took about 6 months to break him of it most nights and we could not close the door either
Chris has been training me for years.
dood…..ya set out ta due… what ya set out for…. and de end ree sult iz….ya got yur mom and dadz bed….which iz what ya wanted in de furst place !!! 🙂
we think they shuld let ewe haz thiz room and bed… and they knead ta find sum place elze ta chillax ~~~~~ 😉 ♥♥
Chris wouldn’t want the bed if he had nobody to annoy. 🙂
Hmmm, I don’t know if trying to keep Chris in a separate room at night would work since he’s a locksmith . . .
You got that right. 🙂
This is a tough one. Not sure Chris will ever be trained. He is a cat after all. You may have to get use to getting no sleep.
I think I have had more than seven hours of sleep twice in the last six months. I am lucky if I get more than six. My wife is lucky because she is a good napper, but I can’t nap during the day.
That is a tough one. Have you tried double sided sticky tape or aluminum foil to keep him from scratching the door?
I did put masking tape on the door to prevent scratch marks but it was ripped off in the morning. Perhaps the double sided tape might work.
You could really confuse him, put him on the bed and you go out and scratch on the closed door to keep him awake.
Hahaha. Good idea. Perhaps I should bother him during the day when he is napping.
Ummm… who’s training who here? MOL!
I know what you mean.
Maybe you should find a cat bed somewhere around the house and just go sleep there! Give Chris the big bed….
Love and licks,
Cupcake
Ha, that would be funny.
He probably thinks that he is trying to train you
I think he is.