We have A Situation with Miss Zuzu here.
Since I moved into this apartment, over a year ago, I have not had one uninterrupted night’s sleep. And why? Because Our Girl here agitates to be fed at the first hint of light, no matter how late she gets her evening feeding.
This agitation takes the form of nipping, running over my head, meowing loudly, knocking things over, tearing up any paper left around (which is quite, quite loud when you’re trying to sleep), jumping on my nightstand and rattling the lamp, getting the dog antsy and generally being a pain in the ass.
I tried to ignore it at first. I’m sure the guy who lives downstairs didn’t appreciate it when she would knock the remote off the dresser and onto the hardwood floor just above his loft.
At 5:30 in the morning.
But ignoring it didn’t help, nor did clearing out anything that she might get hold of and blocking her access to as many horizontal surfaces as possible. The only thing that stopped the annoyance was to just get out of bed and feed the fucking cat.
At 5:30 in the morning.
I’m not, as you may have guessed, a morning person. My alarm is not set to go off until 7 at the earliest, and what with the snooze button, I don’t typically get out of bed until well after that. I thought maybe I would roll with it and try to get to sleep earlier, but my life just isn’t structured in a way in which I can reasonably get to bed before midnight. So I settled into a pattern of cursing the fucking cat when she woke me at the asscrack of dawn, shoving her away from me, stumbling into the kitchen, getting the food ready as she got under my feet, feeding all the little ingrates, going to the bathroom, getting the dog’s bowl off the floor so the cats can’t eat her food and then going back to bed for a laughably short time. During which she usually left me alone, though she did develop the rather annoying habit of curling up right behind me, under my shoulder blade, so that when the alarm did go off and I reached over to turn it off, there she was, in my way. Yes, yes, she’d trained me, but it was either give in or not sleep at all — because I live in a studio, there’s nowhere to go to get away from her.
I thought I was in for some blessed relief as the nights started getting longer and the asscrack of dawn came later.
But no.
For the past few nights, the nudging has started at FOUR-THIRTY. FOUR FUCKING THIRTY. And to make matters worse, even if I get up and feed her, she’s back in my face until it’s time to get up, which means a lot less sleep than I normally get.
So last night I tried something new; I got out of bed at FOUR FUCKING THIRTY, picked up Zuzu, and continued past the kitchen to the bathroom, where I turned on the fan and shut her in. It was a much chastened cat who emerged several hours later for the feeding on *my* schedule.
She didn’t seem to know how to handle the monkey wrench I’d thrown at her and retreated to her hidey-hole in the cat carrier under the desk rather than join the other pets on the bed with me.
This might work.
ingrates… tee hee
My cats have picked up this annoying habit too! What I’m considering doing is getting a separate alarm clock, setting it first to a few minutes after they usually wake me up and then setting it later & later. Then they would associate that particular sound with feeding time. It would probably be a good idea to do this now while I’m unemployed…
Unforeseen hitch: in order to put the cat in the bathroom, you have to catch the cat. And a cat who doesn’t want to go in the bathroom won’t come willingly.
I’m trying earplugs. They feel weird, but so far they’ve bought me a couple extra hours before I’m aware of the agitation.
I’ve been known to throw pillows at my cat when he pulls this shit. Of course, I have a one-bedroom, so I can close the door and ignore him more effectively. He has his bad nights, but mostly, he realizes that Mommy Does Not Get Up Before 7:15.
So here’s what went down this morning: I used the earplugs, but at some point in the night I lost one; and in any event, the earplugs couldn’t quite drown out the sound of the modem getting knocked off the TV stand. I’d thought the modem was okay because it was heavy and had grabby feet. But no.
I think the guy downstairs is an early riser, because if he’s not, he’s going to be so pissed that he got woken up by this at 6.
However, I did catch the little bugger and put her into the bathroom, so it all worked out.
Maybe shut her in the bathroom when you go to bed every night for a week?
She might get the idea.
My usual solution is never, ever feed a cat in the morning, only at night. But it sounds like you can’t make that work since you also have a dog and they’d just eat her food.
You may have thought of it already, but what about something like this?
http://www.amazon.com/PetSafe-5-Meal-Electronic-Pet-Feeder/dp/B000GEWHNS/ref=pd_sbs_k_4
Unfortunately, I feed them canned food, which precludes leaving food out all day or feeding them only once a day, since they’ll only finish half and then the rest will get all nasty.
The earplugs are actually working fairly well, as long as they stay in my ears.
I feel your pain! After weeks (or maybe months?) of not getting enough sleep, I finally had to shut my 19-yr-old cats out of the bedroom at night and run a fan for some white noise. They meow and meow during the night. I think it’s due to deafness, because the behavior started somewhat recently. They do it during the day too, but I’ll locate them and nothing seems to be wrong. I feel guilty, so they get lots of extra daytime petting and treats.
Heh heh - my 20-yr old Dead Kitty [christened thusly by my ex-husband several yrs ago; the Omniscient One had declared that “she must be dead by now”] sleeps on my pillow, fairly peacefully for the most part although she will tread on my hair & swat me upside the head if I move around too much to suit her…
I’m a light sleeper so I’ve just written off a full night’s sleep for the most part these days - between critters & a weak bladder, it’s pretty much hopeless.
Has she settled down yet? Or is she still doing the dawn dance?
It’s better! Because I’m using the earplugs, I don’t hear the antics, so either the antics have stopped, or I’ve just stopped responding to them because I don’t hear them. Which means that I get to sleep in until 7, at least.
Oh good. ^_^