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.