How To Stop This Behavior

I have a cat that wakes me up around 3:30am every morning to eat. Which I course give into. The thing is in order to get fed, he scratches the couch or other furniture to get attention to be fed. I have sprayed the furniture with no scratch spray nightly. I also spray him with water, with no success. As soon as you spray him he goes right back. We also keep his nails trimmed. He has access to 3 scratch posts in the same room. In need of some ideas. He also gets fed before bed about 9:00pm. Here is a photo of my handsome boy Bradley.

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By feeding the cat when he starts scratching at 3am you are just reinforcing the bad behavior. I know it's hard to ignore a cat who's scratching furniture and maybe meowing but you just have to ignore it. Maybe try ear plugs.

Do you leave a small amount of food out overnight for snacking on?

No I don’t he eats very quickly, so any food out is gone within a few short minutes.

Awww... what an adorable kitty. But not quite so adorable at 3 AM. Right.

Is this new behaviour, or a well established routine?

Maybe try a puzzle feeder with a little dry food? That's assuming your cat is waking you up because he's hungry. There are cats who believe that if they're up, you need to be up too

A play session before bedtime often helps. Use a fishing pole toy or something interactive that will get your cat moving.

rubysmama said:

Awww... what an adorable kitty. But not quite so adorable at 3 AM. Right.

Is this new behaviour, or a well established routine?

Click to expand...

Not a new behavior by any means.

How old is Bradley?

I think the fact that you have been giving into this for so long explains why he keeps doing it (my kitten used to do this and we still does sometime- we ignore him and he has mostly stopped). It may be very hard, but you might have to stop getting up and him and instead, see if you can leave out a toy that dispenses food. Maybe even try a food dispenser with a timer for 3:30 am lol Right now, I leave some food out for my kitty so he can nibble but he does still sometimes try to wake me up around 3:30 am as well (is this a "cat witching hour" or something haha). We ignore him... it stinks but it's working...