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- Aug 1, 2018
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I have posted before about my 12 year old Tuxie's constant need for food. We took her off the diet (when she began eating non food objects for the first time ever) despite the vets recommendations, did the math and she is getting the correct amount of calories to maintain her weight. We also added some dry food into her diet, as she was just eating wet before and thought that may help keep her fuller. But she was still waking us up at 4:00 am daily. My fiance gets up for work at 4:30 am. She gets fed four times a day, twice in the am and twice in the PM when we get home. Her last meal is around 8:00 PM or so. We got an automatic feeder to give her dry food set to release at 4:00 am. For almost a month, that worked, she did not wake us up. Then suddenly about two weeks ago she started at 3:30 am meowing for food and she would meow (scream really) until the food came out of the bowl at 4:00 am. She walked around the house meowing. And now she's started at 3:00 am meowing for food and does so for a sold hour, until she is hoarse. The past two mornings she pulled one of her old tricks where she gags so we wake up, it did not work. We have not responded at all. The only thing we did was squirt her with a squirt gun which she enjoys apparently on one or two occasions. We have a three level three bedroom house and we can hear her on the top level from the bottom one screaming. This past weekend, we had guests staying over and she woke them all up, and scratched on all of their doors. She scratches on ours but we ignore her. She's been to the vet, nothing wrong. I am thinking of rolling the feeder back to 3:30 am to see if that helps, but I have a funny feeling that she is just going to keep asking for it earlier and earlier. And then it will cut down on the food she gets during the day, there's only so much we can give her. The only positive thing is that she is not trying to knock over the feeder or sticking her paw up inside it all night to get food something she used to do. We have cameras on the feeder so we can see. One last thing, she only does the whole meowing bit this go round, only if my fiance is there. So if he travels or spends the night away and it's just me, I don't hear a peep from her. He's not responding to her either, I am there I know but of the two of us he's certainly the sucker and she knows it. We have family coming to visit again next month and we want them to be able to sleep peacefully. I have been toying with putting her in the basement (it's finished and safe) with her litter and food so that she cannot get out and maybe putting a noise machine in the guest room. How can we stop this? We cannot leave her food out, she will gobble up a day's worth of food in five seconds and then start asking for more. It seems like every time we solve this problem with her constant need for food it starts up again. I am starting to wonder if we should just feed her constantly and be done with it.