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- Oct 13, 2018
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Hello!
Does anyone have any surefire (or, at this point, even halfway effective) strategies to help me get my cat, Gracie, to stop whining/yowling for her nighttime/overnight food?
She's fed four small meals a day: breakfast around 7am (wet food), daytime kibbles around 9am, dinner around 5pm (wet food), and then overnight kibbles around 10pm, right before I go to bed.
She only whines/yowls before the kibble meals. She loves her wet food and finishes it quickly, but never vocalizes for it. And while she'll whine/yowl a bit for the daytime kibbles, the pre-overnight-kibbles whining/yowling is LOUD and goes non-stop from about 9:30pm onwards. On and on and on. I live in an apartment, so I can only imagine that anyone passing outside my front door thinks I'm letting her starve!
I've tried ignoring her, but she just carries on. I've tried adjusting MY bedtime, to kind of throw her off the schedule (only by about 10-15 minutes earlier/later) -- no dice. I've tried giving her a small pre-snack (when she's quiet and relaxed and loafing on the couch), which is just a portion of her overnight serving, between 8:30 and 9pm, hoping it would lessen her desperation/yowls, but that didn't work, either.
So far, the ONLY thing that's worked even a little is giving her a small wet-food pre-snack around 9pm... but, even then, it just delays the onset of the whines/yowls until closer to 10pm.
It's driving me nuts, and only started a few months ago after she started getting a daily antihistamine for her allergies (which she gets with her pre-snack at 8:30pm). The antihistamine has worked like a charm for her sneezing/snoofles, but has clearly awakened her sense of smell AND her appetite.
There's only so long I can ignore the whining before having to give her the food (which, I'm well aware, she sees as a "reward" for all the whines) because I eventually have to go to bed.
If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them! :-) Thanks in advance!
Does anyone have any surefire (or, at this point, even halfway effective) strategies to help me get my cat, Gracie, to stop whining/yowling for her nighttime/overnight food?
She's fed four small meals a day: breakfast around 7am (wet food), daytime kibbles around 9am, dinner around 5pm (wet food), and then overnight kibbles around 10pm, right before I go to bed.
She only whines/yowls before the kibble meals. She loves her wet food and finishes it quickly, but never vocalizes for it. And while she'll whine/yowl a bit for the daytime kibbles, the pre-overnight-kibbles whining/yowling is LOUD and goes non-stop from about 9:30pm onwards. On and on and on. I live in an apartment, so I can only imagine that anyone passing outside my front door thinks I'm letting her starve!
I've tried ignoring her, but she just carries on. I've tried adjusting MY bedtime, to kind of throw her off the schedule (only by about 10-15 minutes earlier/later) -- no dice. I've tried giving her a small pre-snack (when she's quiet and relaxed and loafing on the couch), which is just a portion of her overnight serving, between 8:30 and 9pm, hoping it would lessen her desperation/yowls, but that didn't work, either.
So far, the ONLY thing that's worked even a little is giving her a small wet-food pre-snack around 9pm... but, even then, it just delays the onset of the whines/yowls until closer to 10pm.
It's driving me nuts, and only started a few months ago after she started getting a daily antihistamine for her allergies (which she gets with her pre-snack at 8:30pm). The antihistamine has worked like a charm for her sneezing/snoofles, but has clearly awakened her sense of smell AND her appetite.
There's only so long I can ignore the whining before having to give her the food (which, I'm well aware, she sees as a "reward" for all the whines) because I eventually have to go to bed.
If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them! :-) Thanks in advance!