How long do I wait after meowing stops to do something?

[Jessiep25]

Hi all,

I've had my sweet little Sky for about 4 weeks now, she is coming up on 5 months old.

Very early on I realised having her in the bedroom with me at night isn't great for either of us, and since Day 1 she has been shut out of the bedroom.
Usually sometime between 5am and 6am she uses the litter box and scratches A LOT which wakes me up and she promptly starts meowing outside my bedroom door. She'll usually meow for 5 mins then go off and do something else then come back and meow e.t.c for at least an hour (I have a little security camera so I can see when she is outside my door.)

This has been happening on and off since I got her, sometimes we'll go a couple of days with no morning crying and I'll think we've nipped it in the bud and then we'll be back to it the next day. Even if she wakes me up at 5am I am very good at waiting until at least 6am for me to leave the room and had really hoped that she would have learnt by now - but perhaps that is just wishful thinking on my end.

For context she gets a wet food breakfast every day at 7:30am and so I don't know if she's simply associating me being up with getting that but I thought by changing that until over an hour after I wake up that she would loose that connection.

So my main question is, how long do I wait after she stop meowing to leave the room, I try to go as long as I can but the nature of her going away and coming back makes it hard to time!

Thanks
J

 

[sivyaleah]

Hi and welcome.
The first thing that I can think of is what time are you feeding her dinner? And is there something for her to snack on overnight?
Kitten are eating machines and should get food as wanted. It could be that waiting until 7:30am to eat is just a bit too long for her to be without food.
Much as I'm no fan of kibble, we always had some available to nibble on around the clock when our younger one was a kitten. I happen to get up a lot earlier than most people so she was already having breakfast around 6:00 am but she always scarfed that down so clearly was hungry already for a decent sized meal.
I'd personally feed her as soon as I got up. Making her wait an hour has got to be frustrating for her. You could getting a timed feeder so that it pops open around the time she usually starts trying to wake you up and see if that helps.

 

[Jessiep25]

Hiya, thanks for your advice!
Her feeding schedule is currently
7:30 am wet food
12pm dry food
5pm dry food
10pm wet food

In total, calorie wise, its 50/50 adult wet and high quality grain free kitten kibble (she has refused every type of wet kitten food I've put infront of her and will only eat the adult wet one so I've stopped trying at this point!) Thankfully she seems very good at drinking and I alway add an extra couple tablespoons of water to her wet food because I'm overly cautious!

I have an automatic dry feeder for the two middle feedings, she sprints across the apartment when she hears the kibble fall into the bowl! I think the idea of giving her a snack first thing in the morning perhaps around 4am is a good idea. I will try that tomorrow morning. She absolutely attacks her food and I don't doubt that she would eat an entire bowl of it if I left it out for her!
Thanks again

 

[sivyaleah]

Nothing wrong with adult food at this point. Our girl was already on all stages food when she arrived to us at 4 months old.

Keep in mind that calorie counts are vastly different for foods - one kibble could be upwards of 550 calories a cup, others only 400. And wet food is similar - some small cans are 3 ounces, others barely reach that. Calories in a typical 3 ounce can can vary from as low as 70ish to a high of 90ish calories.

Saying "wet" or "dry" won't have much meaning unless you know the exact amount being fed, let alone if she finishes each meal.

Try measuring what you're giving her for a few days. You may find you're underfeeding even though you think you're giving her enough.

 

[Jessiep25]

Hiya, I guess I should have been more specific!

She gets 50g (half a pouch) wet food in the AM. And the rest in the evening - the reccomended amount per day of the one I give her is 2 pouches a day so she gets 50% of that. Then I measured the dry food portions that come out the machine and she gets 3x7g per meal which is 21g and the reccomended amount for the dry food is 80g per day so she's getting 50% of that!

I hope that makes sense!

And she definitely finishes each meal, sometimes she'll leave a few bits of wet food and hen go back to it after having a scout of the apartment but it always gets eaten!

 

[sivyaleah]

Hiya, I guess I should have been more specific!

She gets 50g (half a pouch) wet food in the AM. And the rest in the evening - the reccomended amount per day of the one I give her is 2 pouches a day so she gets 50% of that. Then I measured the dry food portions that come out the machine and she gets 3x7g per meal which is 21g and the reccomended amount for the dry food is 80g per day so she's getting 50% of that!

I hope that makes sense!

And she definitely finishes each meal, sometimes she'll leave a few bits of wet food and hen go back to it after having a scout of the apartment but it always gets eaten!

Having trouble with grams to ounces LOL, I assume you're not in the US?

So let me see if I understand you here:

100 grams wet per day?
80 grams dry per day?

If that's it she's not being fed anywhere enough and is underfed for sure Is there a reason you are only feeding half the recommended amounts?

I'm coming up with about 150-175 calories a day on what you wrote. I may still not be understanding it completely. Regardless, it's quite minimal for a kitten, like really really low. She needs double that at least - unless my math sucks worse than I think it does LOL

Hopefully someone else will be along to chime in and help on this!

 

[Jessiep25]

Hiya,

Ah yes I live in Europe

So on the pouches of food the reccomend 200g/24hrs if you're only feeding that and her dry food reccomends 80g/24hrs if you're only feeding that.

So she gets 50% of the reccomended total feeding portion of each, 100g wet and 40g dry.

She's gaining weight but she's due her booster vaccinations (she hadn't had any when she came to me) this week and I'll double check that the vet isn't concerned about her - I certainly don't want to be under feeding her!

I hope that clears it up!

 

[sivyaleah]

J Jessiep25 Yes, it does clear it up.
While it's good for older cats to not over do their daily calories (fat cats are not good!) kittens do need a lot more nutrition in the first year and it's just impossible to overfeed them since they burn up everything they take in usually.
If she's still gaining weight, that's a good thing! And again, I'm not as familiar with brands out of the USA so those may be more calorie dense than what we have here for similar sizing.

 

[Jessiep25]

She certainly has a lot of energy!

Instead of spreading her alloted dry food out to cover a 4am feed too I'll just give her an extra portion then