Help! I Need Sleep. Haha

[Dejylovesanimals]

So I absolutely love my kitties. I rescued them from a barn 5 years ago. The female is the darker Calico looking cat, the ginger baby is my male. The male Frank, is super cuddly and adorable but has a terrible habit of knocking everything in sight over no matter what. Alice the female is persnickety... she’s sweet but extremely bossy. If she wants soft food she tortures me by getting behind the tv to chew wires. So frustrating! I spray her if it’s not feeding time but it barely works. I close the door of my bedroom at night because Frank goes insane at 4am knocking things over. Thus Alice can’t come in either as the door needs to be closed. She constantly comes at 4am and scratches the door super loudly especially when my boyfriend is over . Sometimes I give in and let her in cause I literally cannot stand the scratching sound. She comes in and sleeps on bed quietly but then Frank is left out squeaking In the hallway. What can I do? I need my sleep. I’ve tried getting up to spray them and putting foil on the door to scare Alice as she hates it but it looks awful and falls down. Any ideas would be super helpful. These are my first pets and hey don’t seem to be growing out of their wild behaviour!

 

[susanm9006]

You can’t waffle when it comes to cat rules. If you give in sometimes she is going to keep coming and scratching hoping this time you will let her in. So the options are to add a litter-box to your room shut her in with you for the night, get up and always let her in when she scratches or shut her out and never let her in.

 

[Kefa]

Obviously, they both think you are supposed to get up at 4 am. What if you get up at 4 am and feed them? Will they go back to sleep? If that works, maybe you can try to convince them that it should be 5 am for breakfast. Then 6 am. Somehow from what you said, they have an internal 4 am alarm.

I tried foil on Homer to keep him off the computer desk. It didn't work. He tore it off and played with it.

 

[Ardina]

With cats, you have to set boundaries, or they'll drive you crazy with sleep deprivation! I nearly lost all my marbles for the first couple of months after I adopted Saipha because of the same issue - chewing anything and everything in the middle of the night. I found that spraying bitter apple spray on wires (and anything else that got chewed) worked great.

For getting woken up, you've got to set rules and stick to them consistently. The only thing I've found that works is to ignore the cats. It'll be miserable for a few weeks while they do their utter best to wake you up, but eventually they will give up and let you sleep. I never responded to my cats meows or nudges for breakfast, and now they know that I won't get up to feed them until 1) my alarm has gone off and 2) I've done my morning routine of going to the bathroom and getting dressed.

 

[RufusGizmo]

Unfortunately I used to get up at 3:00 a.m for work purposes but no longer have to, but my cats are now on that schedule. they have actually upped it an hour or two, so I just give in and then try to get back to sleep. If you can, you should definitely try to ignore them. I used to just put them in basement, but not an option now, as I have two new kittens that are hanging down there (integration taking longer than anticipated with some kitten health issues.) but if you nip it in the bud now, do so for sure or you will be getting up earlier and earlier.