# 1 year old kitty that likes to wake us up at 4am...help!



## lenglish06 (Mar 24, 2014)

First post here, hello! 
So I'm the owner of a 1 year old black cat, and he really is lovely! We got him from our local RSPCA (his previous owners didn't want him anymore because they had a baby, poor thing!) and we've had him just over 4 weeks now. He really is very good, he doesn't scratch my furniture, he doesn't do anything remotely naughty, apart from the fact that when we go to bed at night we leave him in the living room/kitchen (I live in an apartment) and shut our bedroom door, and we can hear him crashing about and scratching at our bedroom door, which gets progressively louder the more we ignore it. He has even learned how to pull out the kick boards underneath the kitchen units 
So everytime this happens I have to go and tell him to stop. He usually just ignores me so I've taken to spraying him with water when he does this and generally he will stop. 

I am then woken up at 4.30am by kitty scratching at my bedroom door to wake me up! I can't keep the door open because when I do he's pawing at me, rustling bags, trying to get into the bedside drawers and being a total pain. 

What can I do to make him be a good kitty that just goes to sleep at night?! I'm at my wits end with all this and my sleep is suffering! Please help!


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## Jesthar (May 16, 2011)

Heya, and welcome 

OK, it sounds like you have one very energetic, very BORED cat on your hands, that's all. Young cats are pure bundles of get-up-and-go, and it will take him a bit of time to learn that night is for sleeping, as most cats are at their most active in the twilight and dawn hours - the semi-light is the best time for hunting. So, he needs to be eased into a bedroom routine that will settle him down for the night.

Firstly, what are you feeding, and at what times? If dry food, and it is down all the time, you need to stop that - dry food is bad for cats as they are designed to get 80%+ of their water intake from their food, and cats don't need a constant supply of food to graze on. Also, the brand of food can make a big difference - pretty much all supermarket and big brand foods are laden with grains and sugars, which are guaranteed to send an energetic cat into hyperactivity overload. A belly full of grain free wet food when you go to bed after not having eaten anything for a few hours previously will help him settle down to sleep the night away. Butchers Classic is readily available in several supermarkets, and you can get a lot more great foods online at places like Zooplus and The Happy Kitty Company. I feed a mix of Animonda Carny, Smilla, Butchers Classic and MACs plus Nutriment raw food on a regular rotation, with things like Grau, CatzFineFood, Cosma and Applaws as treat foods.

Seccondly, you need to burn off plenty his energy before that bedtime feed, and that means playing with him - _lots_ of playing with him. Try wand toys such as the Flying Frenzy (Frenzy Cat Toys UK) with different attachments, waggly sticks, laser pointers - anything that he will run around and chase to tire him out. Be warned that isn't going to be a ten minute job, you will probably need to play with him over the course of an hour or two to truly tire him out, giving him breaks when he gets to panting like a steam train.

He also needs some interactive toys to keep him entertained when you are asleep or out, my 10 moth old girl LOVES her pop up play cube (Cat Play Fun Cube - New pop open UK Style) and her Bergen track (Bergan Turbo Track Interactive cat Toy) with flashing ball (Bergan Motion activated light up Ball cat toy). Ping pong balls, bendy drinking straws, and Boinks are also popular playthings  And a multilevel cat tree, if you have space for one, is an excellent investment 

As to getting up to tell him off, please don't spray him with water, it won't do him any good. The pre-bed play session and grain free wet meal should help a lot, but ignoring any attention seeking behaviour as much as possible is better, as it will teach him he won't get a response. He has obviously learnt that banging around will get you to come to him, even if it does get him a wetting. Likewise, young cats are going to be curious and try and get into everything, so it is up to you to cat proof and make sure that his toys are the most interesting option for him by keeping interesting plastic bags etc. to a minimum. Both my cats (8yo and the 10 month old) have the run of house and bedroom at night, and though I occasionally get woken by the kitten at insane-o-clock in the morning, mostly I wake up with them both still asleep somewhere in the bedroom 

Good luck! It might take a little while to train him into the new routine, but if he's half as smart and sweet natured as you say the he should pick it up relatively quickly 

~Jes


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## chillminx (Nov 22, 2010)

Hi there and welcome to Pet Forum 

First of all, please don't spray him with water! It is not an effective way to train a cat. He won't have a clue why you are doing it and may make him aggressive to you, or he will just think it's a game. Either way he won't make any connection between being soaked and and him making a noise that wakes you. 

Cats are crepuscular by nature, meaning they are at their most active at dawn and dusk. It is normal for your cat to be lively at 4.30 am. It is his natural time to wake up and feel hungry. If you want to sleep later, you have to try and work around this. 

He is still only a kitten at 1 year old, so he needs you to offer him plenty of active playtime during the evening to help him use up his energy and be ready to settle for the night at bedtime. 

For an hour or so before bedtime get him running around chasing fishing rod toys e.g. Flying Frenzy or Da Bird, or a laser penlight, or ping pong balls you throw for him. Do this every evening. 

At bedtime settle him in one room, with his litter tray, bed, water bowl and a dish of high meat protein tasty wet food. He will then eat, groom and sleep. 
(normal behaviour pattern). You then go to bed and close the door, then close your bedroom door so there are 2 doors closed between you. 

To keep him sleeping later than dawn you will need blackout blinds or curtains with blackout linings at the windows. 

Also, buy a battery-operated autofeeder from Amazon, fill one of the dishes with wet food, and set the timer to open at 4.15 am. Kitty will then eat the food, groom, and doze until you get up later to give him his breakfast.

Don't leave dry food down for him at night. It will only encourage him to be wakeful and keep nibbling. Cats do not need to graze, they need proper meal times with decent protein food. Dry food contains carbohydrates which cause peaks and troughs in the blood sugar, making for a restless, edgy cat who finds it hard to settle.


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## lenglish06 (Mar 24, 2014)

Thanks for the replies  he loves his squeaky mouse on a wand and we always try to play with him in the evenings and usually it tires him out. We don't feed him dry food at all, I have yet to order off zooplus but in the meantime I feed him hi life and wainwright's (from pets st home, grain free etc). Will just have to wait and see what happens I suppose, though tonight he has been very sleepy so will probably be up playing all night! Silly kitty! He is the cutest


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## chillminx (Nov 22, 2010)

Great to hear you don't feed him any dry food! :thumbup1: 

I think feeding him at bedtime and then leaving food in a timer for him to eat at dawn may help a lot.  Plus maybe a set of earplugs for you


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## Tenar (Mar 29, 2014)

Ooh, that cube toy looks fun. I have now cut holes in a cardboard box in the same fashion, we'll see if she takes to it.

OP, why not train your kitten to wear a harness and lead and take him for walks? Get a good harness/walking jacket, handmade is cheaper than you'd expect, and read up on how to get him used to it. Our Ninja took to it really fast and absolutely adores her walks. I tried a Mynwood jacket but while Maria is really lovely, the jacket just did not fit, so I ended up making one myself (tan needlecord one side, hi-vis orange batik the other side, reflective piping). The Flexi Neon lead is really excellent, I recommend it strongly. We take Ninja to local public gardens and kirkyards and all pootle around happily. It's been, hmm, maybe five or six weeks now, and she's clearly improving in confidence, doing much better with strangers, and is less fussed by roads (we carry her for that bit, the road is too busy and the pavement is narrow and covered with tourists). And happier, of course! Sometimes we don't even need to add a play session later, it's enough for her for the day.


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## Iduna (Feb 1, 2012)

Tenar said:


> Ooh, that cube toy looks fun. I have now cut holes in a cardboard box in the same fashion, we'll see if she takes to it.
> 
> OP, why not train your kitten to wear a harness and lead and take him for walks? Get a good harness/walking jacket, handmade is cheaper than you'd expect, and read up on how to get him used to it. Our Ninja took to it really fast and absolutely adores her walks. I tried a Mynwood jacket but while Maria is really lovely, the jacket just did not fit, so I ended up making one myself (tan needlecord one side, hi-vis orange batik the other side, reflective piping). The Flexi Neon lead is really excellent, I recommend it strongly. We take Ninja to local public gardens and kirkyards and all pootle around happily. It's been, hmm, maybe five or six weeks now, and she's clearly improving in confidence, doing much better with strangers, and is less fussed by roads (we carry her for that bit, the road is too busy and the pavement is narrow and covered with tourists). And happier, of course! Sometimes we don't even need to add a play session later, it's enough for her for the day.


I'm Edinburgh born and we bring the cats up for family visits etc. Carlton Hill has been a hit with cats and tourists but gotta watch the dogs especially lower down.


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## Tenar (Mar 29, 2014)

We really like Dunbar's Close Gardens, just off the Royal Mile. Usually very quiet, and dogs are extremely rare.


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## lillysnightgarden (Mar 26, 2014)

Reading with interest 

We're having the same problems with our 10mth old. She sleeps with us at night in her bed next to ours as she has special needs and gets very stressed if we lock her out but I can say the automatic pet feeder helped last night. She woke me at 5am instead of 4am which is a step in the right direction!

She's an indoor cat but we have flatcats window covers so I open the window and she settles down to watch the birds for a couple of hours so I can go back to sleep. We found that it was mainly hunger for her rather than attention but I think plenty of things to keep them occupied can only help.

Good luck!


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