Cats and lie ins

[SheldonTheWonderShlong]

What happens if you feed your cat at approx 7am Monday to Friday but want a lie in at the weekends to say 9am. Is it possible or is the idea of a lie in ridiculous?

Mine are trained to come when I do a special whistle. So if they're upstairs and I want to go to bed I just whistle them down and give them a treat! Simples

OP it will all get sorted out when you get your cat and you learn each other's personalities and routines.

All doors open most of the time - took a bit of getting used to.

She wakes up at any time from 5am, and wants attentions, and sometimes under the covers of its cold!!

Occassionally she is very vocal in the early morning, then she gets taken to the kitchen/ dinner and door closed. Has food and bed and litter tray so is fine - I still feel guilty though.

She sleeps either under he bed or on it. When I’m home she doesn’t like to be far from me, so she would never voluntarily go downstairs alone at night.

I waited twenty years to get a kitten - she is great company and is already a member of the family. Can be hard work though!!!

Fascinating! Thank you all

I keep a water pistol next to my bed for noisy impatient cats when I'm having a lie in. I've only ever used it a couple of times as they're fast learners. Now they sit on the bed staring at me until I wake up, then they kick off. Sometimes I'm awake but I keep my eyes closed just to annoy them.

i don't get why cat owners/servants are obsessed with keeping them off the kitchen worktop. Mine cannot be controlled or coerced. I just wipe the kitchen top every time before I use it. It's less hassle than going head to head with The Master.

Dry cat food enables lie in

Ours are shut in the kitchen overnight. They have biscuits, water, nice warm cat baskets, cat flap and litter tray, so they can cope until I'm ready to let them burst into the house and bounce on our beds. LittleFurry is a great one for furtling around in the night, throwing things off the tops of wardrobes and creeping under covers, and BigFurry has the beginnings of dementia so has a tendency to wander about looking confused and miaowing loudly, so they are not welcome in bedrooms at night. They're usually pretty good at putting themselves to bed when they see me get up to put the kettle on about 10pm, but LittleFurry was hiding somewhere and has just come into my room now, so I've redirected her to the kitchen. On the odd occasion that we stay up really late, they take themselves off to their baskets and glare at us reproachfully if we dare to use the kitchen in the middle of the night.

My Bengal has his favourite dried food on offer throughout the day and night. He eats when he wants and is happy as long as there's a big fresh bowl of water as well and his litter tray is clean. Still tries to break in the bedroom at 3 am in the morning and does some singing loudly just in case I want to ignore him. If he gets in he does the window walk until you can't take any more. The thing is cats are nocturnal and we are not so maybe lie ins are rarer and rarer than you would wish.

My dog has cottoned on to the cat not being allowed onto the kitchen work surfaces and barks at the cat when she does it and she jumps down immediately. Everything gets wiped down anyway but I have a hob that turns itself on if touched so I worry the cat might turn a ring on.
She has access all areas and will pick at a cupboard door continuously until I give her a snack but there are usually a few Dreamies in her bowl so I think it's just a control thing.

My Bengal has learned to open doors so can't shut him away and he is a mummy's boy and wants to be wherever I am.

I once embarked on a training regime with my cat in order to move his breakfast time a bit later. He pawed me in the eye while I was ignoring him and pretending to sleep. I got cellulitis on my eyelid and had to wear an eyepatch like a pirate for a few days. We persevered though and he had me trained very quickly. Breakfast never late again.

my cats scream the house down if doors are shut. Doesn't matter whether they actually want to go through them though. They are just morally opposed to them being shut and will scream until you open them and then saunter off the other way. Previous cats were trained out of this and I was smug and thought all cats could be trained. These ones were sent to punish my foolishness.

5 cats here...no area in the house is cat free!
2 litter trays in the bathroom, 2 trays in the conservatory...and one cat who will only go outdoors.
Food...2 on special dry food so we leave that out all day.
2 sleep in the bed, 2 sleep on the bed and 1 sleeps in the cupboard. All get up at 7:30am in the winter which is after we get up.
Lie ins...ha ha ha. I have 2 kids who haven't mastered the concept of sleeping past 7am.
Kitchen areas...just anti-bac cleaning stuff.
Going outside...they have a Catio as they are spoilt boys.

All so different. My cat gets fed around 0730 weekdays and generally 0900 at weekends. She will wait until we are up. She always has supper before bed. Has free reign of the house with a cat flap. She sleeps on our bed.

I keep cat treats in the bedside draw and can get a couple out and fling them across the room to stop the cat dancing on my head without even opening my eyes. Seems to keep him happy and distracted for a while on the rare occasions I get to stay in bed past official cat-breakfast time.

External catflap opens on a timer and internal ones allow full cat-access to cat-palace our crappy little house.

As pp have said, dry food and water available all the time.
No cat free areas, quite frequently find dcat asleep in the bath.
We don't have a catflap yet, but he scratches at the door when he wants out and miaows when he wants back in. I hear him, dh doesn't so he says. He's always in at night but all that takes is calling his name at the door if he's out.

Right now he is taking up half of my bed..
Sometimes he sleeps with the dc but I have been chosen tonight.

Hmm yes it will be me up at the crack of dawn as all the others in this house would sleep through a bloody earthquake.

Our cat waits until I'm up. She doesn't complain at all, she usually has food left from the night before as we feed her just before bed too. Honestly I don't even think about it when I want a lie in! She's a house cat so extremely dependent on us.

She also doesn't bother us at night- we close our doors and she sleeps in her bed in the playroom. She has free run of the house apart from this though so she isn't cooped up. We kept them in the kitchen at night as kittens. Extremely occasionally she'll yowl but very rarely wakes us. She has lots of toys around the house to keep her occupied

We have an extremely fat bastard, food hoovering machine of a cat. If we left out dry food all the time he wouldn't be able to move. Getting him on the scales at the vet's is getting increasingly embarrassing. He went off his food lately, we thought he'd had it.

Ours has free wander round the house in the day but at night time gets shut downstairs. Has the run of 3 rooms that we leave all the doors open to but generally doesn’t shift off the sofa.

I feed at 6:30 weekdays, as soon as I walk downstairs he jumps off the sofa to greet me at the kitchen door. Having a lie in at weekends is easy because he just doesn’t shift until he hears me come down.

how you tell a cat to go downstairs when you want to go to bed. Don't they just ignore you?

we call him down, stick a treat in his bowl if we have to or just pick him up but he is mostly in the living room in the evening after his last trip out before bed.

Cat not allowed in bedrooms but has a really comfy spot on sofa with covers, pillows etc to keep her downstairs and asleep. If you fancy a proper lie in a few dreamies placed on window sills, stairs to distract them if they wake up early helps stop them making it to your room.

If you wake up early and want to stay in bed a bit longer you need to freeze, do not turn over, do not breathe, don’t even move your eyeballs, your cat will know you and will shoulder barge their way into your bedroom

Our cats are limited to downstairs at all times as we're renovating upstairs and there are too many nooks and crannies for them to get stuck in!

They let us sleep until whenever - on weekdays we're up at 7 but at weekends it's much later. They're normally still asleep whenever we come down!

They have dry food and water down at all times and have never woken us for food - it's honestly something I've never experienced with cats so I've never understood people saying it all the time on here!

Maybe it's because they don't have w real routine that we don't get pestered. They only get wet food occasionally and tuna once a week or so, there's no set routine in their lives at all!