Pets
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Excessive meowing in the morning
We usually wake up at 8 on weekdays and like to sleep in on weekdays. Lately, one of our cats has decided that he doesn't like that routine and he starts howling and howling at 7:30ish because he wants to be fed. Not such a big deal on weekdays, but a bigger deal on weekends.
We've tried locking him out of the bedroom (we live in a one-bedroom apartment, so we can't lock him in another room), but him howling at the door keeps me up. (And I hate locking them out because then I miss out on valuable snuggle time with the one who isn't howling.)
Is there any way to make him calm down about his food?
Thanks!
Re: Excessive meowing in the morning
Do you free feed or have set meal times? If you have set meal times, you could try an automatic feeder, but I am not sure how well that will work with more than one cat. Or, you could sleep with a squirt bottle and spray the one who howls at you to get up. I did this with B when he would try to wake me up to feed him. Just be sure they don't see you doing it, so they associate the spray with their action, not with you.
A couple of our boys get DH up at the same time every day (come to think of it, I am not sure why he stopped using the spray), and he will feed them, and then come back to bed. Or sometimes he just stays up.
5 cats. 1 baby.
To make you feel my love.
At night, right before we go to bed, we put a small spoon of wet food in his dish. We also leave out a small amount of dry food, so if he gets hungry he'll have something to snack on. That cut back on his meowing in the morning. We do put a small amount of wet food in his dish in the morning, but not right when we get up. We are trying to be a little random so he doesn't get a set schedule. He doesn't appear to be waking us up for food.
Our cat does a lot of meowing when he wants to play.
We don't free feed because the boy has a bit of a weight problem and there are enough food competition issues that leaving food out = they eat it all immediately so the other doesn't get it. We give them about 1/4 of their calories for the day at midnight, so it isn't like they're waiting THAT long for breakfast (but they eat that food right away).
This weekend, I woke up both days -- very begrudgingly -- to feed them, and then didn't go back to bed. Both days, boy cat went back into the bedroom after being fed to howl until my husband (his best buddy) woke up. So I suspect that it may be more than just food-motivated, unfortunately.
Oh, and sometimes ignoring him in the morning leads to him climbing up on me and pulling my hair with his teeth, or laying across my neck and batting at my husband's nostrils and eyelids with his claws out.
He's lucky he's so cute