Kitten Wakes Us Up Early Every Morning

[lemonboppyseed]

My partner and I adopted an adorable kitten about a month ago, who is now 14 weeks old. In general he is wonderfully behaved, but every morning around 5 or 6 he will decide it's play time and/or cuddle time and start doing some combination of the following: running in circles on the bed, kicking small objects around loudly, meowing and purring loudly (almost always both at once) very close to us, biting our toes under the covers, licking all over our faces, and the one that worries me the most which is that he keeps trying to bite my earrings out of my ears.

I've worn the same small sterling hoops in my ears 24/7 for several years now, and don't like the idea of having to take them out before bed. I also have ADHD and I'm super scattered in the morning, and leaving the house without them in if I forgot them would bother me enough to mess up my day, which is why I leave them in. However, I also worry about what would happen if he accidentally swallowed one. Sometimes he is successful in getting them out, and he usually then drops them next to me, but he could still swallow one without meaning to and I don't want him eating anything pokey for obvious reasons.

His litter was found without their mom so he's a bottle baby, which we learned after having him a couple weeks because a friend's roommate works at the humane society. I had already kind of suspected this because of his behavior, because he's really into biting/sucking on anything he can grab and definitely gets separation anxiety away from us, although he's getting better about that. I do think a lot of this behavior right now is that he's still a tiny kitten and he has tons of energy to burn off, and I'm hopeful he'll settle down once he's older, but in the meantime I was wondering if anyone has words of advice so that we can rest!

 

[She's a witch]

5 or 6am is not that bad for a kitten, it could have been worse He's bored alone and of course he wants to spend time with you I'd suggest getting him a kitten company, and try to teach the two not to play on the bed. Kittens should never be adopted alone, especially those that have been raised without mom.
Single-Kitten Syndrome - MEOW Cat Rescue
Yes, kittens have tons of energy and they're not for everyone, especially not for someone doesn't want another cat. He will calm down but in general, it's hard to predict what his personality will be. But he will get calmer for sure.
If you have two kittens, you could simply keep them out of your bedroom at night (I would never do this to one, he would be terribly lonely). I'd learn to sleep with ear plugs. Never react to him playing, as he will learn it works. Have some toys for him away from the bed so hopefully he plays with them instead. And whenever you're home during a day, try to keep him awake, so that at night he's tired enough to sleep through the night. Does he have unlimited access to the food in the morning? If he's hungry, it may be the reason he wakes you up.

As for the earrings, I see not choice but to take them off at night, he can really swallow it. How about you place them in your purse, wallet, pocket, so that you're sure you will have them with you if you forget to take them on in the morning?

 

[basilleaves]

Kittens are so silly! Chances are he'll grow out of it. Both my cats dedicated the first six months of their lives to driving me bonkers between the hours of 1 and 5 AM. One now sleeps through the night and the other saves his crazies for 9 AM .

Try tiring him out with some super playtime an hour before bed! Keeping all the toys on the opposite side of the house also worked for us.

You may need to take your earrings off if you don't want to close the bedroom door. Even if the kitten can't swallow the hoops now, this isn't a habit you want to nurture! Good luck!

 

[lemonboppyseed]

5 or 6am is not that bad for a kitten, it could have been worse He's bored alone and of course he wants to spend time with you I'd suggest getting him a kitten company, and try to teach the two not to play on the bed. Kittens should never be adopted alone, especially those that have been raised without mom.
Single-Kitten Syndrome - MEOW Cat Rescue
Yes, kittens have tons of energy and they're not for everyone, especially not for someone doesn't want another cat. He will calm down but in general, it's hard to predict what his personality will be. But he will get calmer for sure.
If you have two kittens, you could simply keep them out of your bedroom at night (I would never do this to one, he would be terribly lonely). I'd learn to sleep with ear plugs. Never react to him playing, as he will learn it works. Have some toys for him away from the bed so hopefully he plays with them instead. And whenever you're home during a day, try to keep him awake, so that at night he's tired enough to sleep through the night. Does he have unlimited access to the food in the morning? If he's hungry, it may be the reason he wakes you up.

As for the earrings, I see not choice but to take them off at night, he can really swallow it. How about you place them in your purse, wallet, pocket, so that you're sure you will have them with you if you forget to take them on in the morning?

Unfortunately we're not in a situation where multiple pets are possible, but I'm job hunting at the moment and while it sucks not to have income at the moment, I am grateful that it means I can spend a lot of my day with him currently. We also have a few friends who visit frequently, and he really loves having the extra people around to

 

[lemonboppyseed]

Lol, cat jumped onto my keyboard. He loves having the extra people around to play with him! When we can't be with him we usually try to leave nature videos or music on for him but that doesn't happen all that often currently.

 

[lemonboppyseed]

Kittens are so silly! Chances are he'll grow out of it. Both my cats dedicated the first six months of their lives to driving me bonkers between the hours of 1 and 5 AM. One now sleeps through the night and the other saves his crazies for 9 AM .

Try tiring him out with some super playtime an hour before bed! Keeping all the toys on the opposite side of the house also worked for us.

You may need to take your earrings off if you don't want to close the bedroom door. Even if the kitten can't swallow the hoops now, this isn't a habit you want to nurture! Good luck!

For most of the night when he's not bouncing off the walls, he happily sleeps near us and we definitely want him to keep doing that! I'll have to get myself in the habit of taking my earrings off before I fall asleep; it'll be weird because I don't take them out 99% of the time but I definitely don't want him to keep chewing on something that's not good for him.

 

[susanm9006]

When he wakes you at five simply shut him out of your room until you are ready to get up. He may meow and scratch at your door at first but will get used to the routine. As he gets older he will figure out if he wakes you he gets banished and should start staying quiet longer.

 

[IronHippo]

You could consider wearing him out and then putting him in a big enough kennel with litterbox etc. at night if you don't want to shut him out. I think at that age Radish was still sleeping in his separate bedroom--we did start letting him sleep outside at night not too long after, but I think shutting him away at night when he was young helped train him to understand nighttime hours.

I'm also a really deep sleeper so this next part/option was easy: Per The Trainable Cat, when you react to nighttime activities or early morning waking, you're actually training the cat to keep doing what it's doing because eventually it'll get a reaction out of you. If you react at all, they'll just learn that they need to keep trying harder to get you up, so you can't react until they settle down. Make sure all noisy toys (as with all things a bored kitty might potentially get into) are put away before you go to bed. The ignore method has worked pretty well for both Marple and Radish--Marple has admittedly always been very well-behaved except when she thinks breakfast is late because we've slept in, but for Radish in particular, he now pretty much just entertains himself and hangs around waiting for one of us to make a midnight bathroom trip before bugging the riser for pets.

Good luck!