Kitty – The 5:00 a.m. Bane of our Existence
This is Kitty. He’s now 16 years old and our twins think he has Kitty Alzheimer s because he’ll ask to be let outside. Then five minutes later, he wants in. He does this ALL DAY LONG. As if we have nothing better to do.
But his most irritating, annoying, irritating, upsetting trait is to scratch at our bedroom door EVERY freaking morning at 5:00 a.m. – to have us stumble blindly into the kitchen to “WOOSH” his dry food so that he can settle down and eat it? AND, if it’s not done “properly,” he’ll scratch at the door again, and again.
ALL we want is some sleep CAT!
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Ha! Nico and The Bandit do the same thing: in and out, in and out. If I don’t go outside with them, they’re afraid I’ve left them behind, so they rush to the door to make sure I’m still there, and when I come to the door, their fears are assuaged, and they go back to chasing squirrels.
We’re just here to serve, 24/7. My sweet husband’s first task this a.m. was cleaning up Kitty’s barf in the hallway. And then he turned around and did it again. I smell a vet bill coming on.
I thought it was only *us*!! I just read about Kitty on MSNBC and I absolutely *had* to comment on his need for you to “whoosh” his dry food at all hours of the day or night. One of our two cats, Robin, a neutered 3 year old male, has a very, very similar behavior. He doesn’t usually desire to have his dry food “whooshed” (although sometimes he does). But he *does* have a strong aversion to eating alone. Sometimes when he’s hungry in the middle of the night (2 – 3 am), he will walk right past his food dish, enter our bedroom, jump onto our bed, crawl on top of me (seldom my wife), purr loudly right into my ear, and start “kneading” me until he finally succeeds in waking me up. Once I’m halfway awake, he “leads” me over to his food dish, where he expects me to sit next to him and wait until he has finished his late night snack. Afterward, I’m free to leave and go back to bed. We’re not so much peeved at his behavior, though, just thoroughly perplexed by it!
Company is absolutely necessary to the eating process Kitty says. He concurs with your cat.
It IS perplexing! Does food smell better after you woosh it? Maybe Kitty wants a dinner companion? Any suggestions out there from other hapless pet owners?
In regard to cats and food “whooshing”, I should also mention our second cat, Bobbie, a 2-1/2 year old spayed female. She doesn’t need to have her dry food “whooshed” by any human before she eats it. She does it all by herself. But the problem is, she “whooshes” half of the dry food out of the dish and all over the floor before she starts to eat! So after she finishes eating, we have to sweep up all the kibble and put it back in the food dish so Robin can enjoy a *civilized* meal later (along with a human companion, of course).
male ginger tabby, almost 3; definitely does not suffer from alzheimer’s so it has to be pure malice. I want to go outside; no please I want to come in. No I don’t care if that door is open i want to go out from this door. Well, I don’t want you to close the door, I want you to stand there with it open so I can come in and go out as I please and you can watch me. Follows me everywhere, and has to check to see where I am. Never knew cats required so much attention.
To the 5am door openers- thank your lucky stars. Dear Marion’s incessant mewing to be let out can occur anywhere between 12am and 5am with no pattern. I have to let him out because i refuse to deal with litter. If I don’t let him out I run the risk of cleaning poo from the floor.
Don’t talk about the feeding; company is not really required to eat but regardless of whether there is food in the bowl or not dear Marion insists that i get up at 6:30 am to add new food and change his water.
On top of all that – the little *#%NF33$ bites and he can hold a grudge. Nasty little cat…but when he doesn’t come in I worry.
Love the name Psycho Cat! Sounds like it’s a 24/7 job, like ours! To make matters worse, my husband works at home. He just set up a new L-shaped desk in his office. Kitty is THRILLED with all of the new paper piles. He can sleep on all of them during the day. And, he gets to walk from one end of the desk to the other. His favorite exercise, however, is to walk between my husband and his computer monitor and just stand there, with his paws on the keyboard. Guess he’s attention defficient.
I have one “normal” behaved cat..even if he is slightly wimpy to be named “Spike”. No, I recant this statement. He waits till the most inopportune moments to demand your lap and have you actually hold his tail so he can SUCK IT! Not just for a few minutes, either. He proceeds to nurse a full inch’s length of his tail for an easy half an hour if not de~throned from the lap he occupies. His beautiful black tail has become discolored to a funky brown color from this gross habit. Oh, I digressed.
So,I have Chase Manhatten, my absolutely psychotic little girl kitty. As a severely malnourished rescue kitten, I was simply happy that she survived when i first found her and nursed her to health. Hence her name.She cost me an easy 300$ in vet bills before I even knew if I would keep her. I just wanted her to live.
Now 5 years later, her quirks are a bane to all who live with her. She cannot go outside because she is just cross~eyed enough to be blinded about 12 inches out from her nose. I learned this when I let her out for the first time and she was mauled by an opposum and couldn’t defend herself. (More vet bills)Okay, she can be an indoor kitty, I reasoned.
Soon, she developed a yet to be named arthritic condition in one leg. (MORE vet bills)No more kitty condo. My other cat became even fatter with no exerciser to climb on. Oy. This was not fun anymore.
When my older cat passed away, Chasey became utterly distraught without her freind and began incessantly MAOWing throughout the house at odd hours. I chalked this up to a passing stage of grief and waited patiently. That was nearly 2 and a half years ago.
The MAOW alarm, as it has been aptly named, has become Chasey’s way of getting anything she wants. It is a high pitched,super~annoying meow that she does nonstop until you simply cannot stand it any longer. Giving in brings instant silence. No behavior modification has worked in staunching this awful habit.
This terrible quirk has made me contemplate sending her packing on many occasions…only to realize that no one would adopt a cat with this many issues. I am obliged to see her through her many neuroses.
Any tips on coping with an overly verbal psychotic cat???????
I’ve heard a few Kitty swear words in my time. Mostly related to the speed of service. Anyone else have a verbally abusive cat that they’ve weaned from this behavior? Please share your solutions – we’re all waiting breathlessly!
Moral of this thread: Cats are very adept at training humans, no?
AND if we don’t cater to their needs, there’s all kitty hell to pay, isn’t there?
I must be very well cat trained then….the MAOW alarm just went off again last night. Chasey crawled under the baby’s crib after he went down for the night and MAOW..MAOW..MAOW…till finally i went running in before she woke up the sleeping baby. She wins again!!!! OYE!!!!
Let me tell you about me assasin kitty. I got her at about 12 weeks of age from a co-worker. She will not let anyone into my house but me without attacking them and that includes my parents who are over at least twice a week. My mother is scared to death to even see her.
She has more than once tripped me as I was going thru the living room. Once it was at just the spot that my head would of hit the top corner of my entertainment center if I had not been able to catch myself. She can be all lovie when she wants to. She just loves to come in and lay on my leg as I type this sitting on my bed or just surfing the net, but a soon as I get up or she thinks I’m going to get up she becomes a ball of flying claws. I have a 4 inch scar on one arm from one session where I was petting her and she went from purring to clawing in like a tenth of a second.
Any suggestions on how to get her to calm down. I’ve tried drugs and they don’t work on her. I’ve even had to watch my mothers cat zelda for 3 weeks and I hardly saw her as mine had her hiding the entire time. I even had them shut in diffrent rooms for a few days and could not get zelda to come out.
Usually she is pretty good but I know I could never take her to a shelter as she would have no hope of being adopted.
Sounds like you have an aggressive cat. Do you know what triggers these attacks? For instance, does she hate other cats and your mother owns a cat Zelda, therefore, she hates your Mom? Is this a new behavior for your cat? Have you tried using a spray water bottle in her face when she gets agressive? Just brainstorming here. Has anyone in the Pet-Peeves community ever dealt with an aggressive cat before? If so, what helped? Please comment for this owner of the Assasin Kitty.
Sounds like you have an aggressive cat. Do you know what triggers these attacks? For instance, does she hate other cats and your mother owns a cat Zelda, therefore, she hates your Mom? Is this a new behavior for your cat? Have you tried using a spray water bottle in her face when she gets agressive? Just brainstorming here. Has anyone in the Pet-Peeves community ever dealt with an aggressive cat before? If so, what helped? Please comment for this owner of the Assasin Kitty.
Some of the ones that live here do the go out, come in routine. The most annoying thing here and it isn’t all that bad, is that I will feed the five or six that are inside, and then one of the other ones comes home and wants to eat, so then everyone else wants to eat again. Then another one comes. That goes on all day. I do go out and feed a bunch outside and that slows it down a little bit.
I have never had an aggressive cat that was aggressive towards me.