Where is your cat overnight?

[Judystilldreamsofhorses]

Our cat has recently started coming into our bed at exactly 5am, demanding breakfast. She’s six, and has always come in round about getting up time (6.30) but this earlier invasion is very annoying - there is no way I’m getting up at 5, but I tend not to properly go back to sleep after her patting me in the face, purring, and pulling my hair. DP sleeps through, so she doesn’t even entertain him. She will eventually settle down between us until the alarm, but that 90 minutes of lost sleep makes me grumpy.

She has constant access to dry food, so it’s not that she’s starving, and actually she goes out as soon as I get up, then has breakfast after I am showered/dressed.

My DP is threatening to shut her overnight in the kitchen. I think this is cruel, since it would be a huge change. (She can open our bedroom door.) We do have a big kitchen, she could have a bed in there, her food/water is there, and there’s a litter tray in the utility room. But it just feels mean when she’s used to sleeping on a fur throw on the sofa.

Where do your cats sleep? Will this phase come to an end?

Our cat wakes dh around 5-6am most mornings, doesn't bother with me. She sleeps on the bed somewhere usually on me because I don't really fidgit. But she'll always wake dh and paw at his face to be fed in the mornings.

She sleeps on my bed most of the night. Disappears a couple of times to go out but she doesn't wake me for food. If she did I'm afraid I would probably shut her downstairs!

18 year old deaf car sleeps in her massive dog bed with cosy blankets next to my bed because she gets disorientated in the night and starts wailing.
Because she is deaf she has no volume control so I have to get up and pet her until she realises where she is.
This can go in 2 or 3 times a night but I live her so I'm happy to care for her in her old age.

Try putting her bed or throw in your bedroom. Maybe if she can see you're still asleep, from the comfort of her bed, she'll just doze back off.

Shut in the kitchen/living room (open plan)
Sometimes he sleeps on a chair, mostly in his igloo bed, plus his food/water and litter tray are all there and he can spy out the patio doors - his fave thing!

I get up for work at 05:15 three days a week (12hr shifts). But my one Twatcat thinks I work 7 days a week and insists on waking us at 5:15 EVERY BLOODY MORNING. In fairness he sleeps on top of my bed between my feet (but on top of the duvet) from the time I go to bed until about 5:15 and doesn't move... Then he becomes a complete TwatCat and scratches and wails loudly until somebody gets up and locks him in the bathroom for another couple of hours. My other cat is a complete darling and just cuddles up and sleeps until we get up.

I think she's in and out and in and out (catflap). Has food left down. generally comes for a cuddle around 5.45, which is ok, as I have to take pills 1hr before having anything, and I go back to sleep and give her breakfast when I get up. Seems to somehow understand the concept of Saturday and let me sleep longer.

By the back door with the kitchen door shut. She has a cat flap. If she had free access to the whole house she wakes us up constantly. We would all be shattered.

At the weekends it’s a nuisance, but I always go back to sleep after getting up with her because I don’t have to get up at 6.30. She is so cute with the face patting, but the hair pulling and walking on the back of the pillows putting hair all over them is a pest. She goes through phases in terms of sleeping places being in/out of favour - sofas, her actual bed, the spare room, on the laptop - but she never ever sleeps in the kitchen.

Maybe the answer is to train DP to wake up...

We have an elderly nocturnal wailer as well. She's currently asleep on the lid of a basket next to the radiator in the living room, but come 3am she'll be wandering the house like a lost soul yelling her head off. DH gets up to her every night, goes downstairs and cuddles her for half an hour. He said recently it's like having a baby in the house again.

Have a cat flap and cat knows better than to try and wake me up, but she is def ready as soon as I get up in the morning - she isn't shut out of my bedroom but as her favourite place to sleep when she's in there seems to be as close to my face as possible, she never settles there!!!!

Ours is the same.

Shes 16, was ok till about a year ago...

As soon as she hears any movement after about 5am (Normally one of us in the loo)
She just meaows constantly. She will only re settle if the heater is on in the bedroom, if its not, she will carry on meowing, till partner gets up, feeds her and puts the heating on, she will then settle next to the radiator and go back to sleep

Locked in the kitchen. He's 9 months old and when previously allowed free run of the house at night wanted to play at 4am. He would also wake me up 15 mins before my alarm went off and we all know that's the time you have the best sleep.

He's not impressed when we announce time for bed. The look on his face is priceless.

Madam cat sleeps on my 8 year olds bed.
Sir cat likes sitting on the living room windowsill - the bit outside. At any rate, he is there when I go to bed, and usually there when I get up.... he sleeps most of the day, alternating between DS1 and DS2 beds, depending on where the sun is....

Mine is on my pillow, lovingly wrapped around my head like a very furry bonnet. He bites me or whacks me with his paw if I move and disturb him.

Usually on my actual head!!

Mine is 10 years old. He goes in and out of the cat flap over bight. But mainly during the winter months he sleeps on the arm chair in our bedroom.

He doesn’t tend to move until I get up but has never woken me for food. Someone times he waits at the top of the stairs while I get up in the morning.

I always put mine in the kitchen overnight with 3 beds, two hot water bottles and two fleeces but he died before Xmas and I bitterly regret it.

He would wee in the house if upset so we did have to really.

Outside my bedroom door on a blanket that came from the RSPCA with him, or on another one of their blankets on the middle landing. He runs about like a loon for a few hours a night so it’s best for everyone that he doesn’t do that in our bedrooms. He has free rein of kitchen, hall, stairs and landings, living room, dining room and playroom. In the day he sleeps on the playroom sofa as it’s in the sun. Litter tray by the back door and no cat flap.

I would close the bedroom door at night and put something heavy enough in front of it so the cat couldn't open your door. That way she still has the run of the rest of the house without waking you up.

Middle girl is a wanderer and tends to pootle about outside most of the night (and a day. She does a very good impression of a stray).

Fat old tortoiseshell girl has taken residence under the spare bed by the radiator.

Kitten boy sleeps on our bed on a dressing gown DP bought me that I never got to wear because the kitten claimed it 🙄

Oh and yes - they think 5.15am - weekday alarm time - is for EVERY DAY 😬

Mine has the run of the downstairs of the house at night. No access to the outdoors at night (he does in the daytime) and no coming into the bedrooms though.

They have the run of all non-bedroom rooms and can get out of the catflap but not in bedrooms as they would wake us up demanding food and I am a crap sleeper at the best of times so need to maximise what sleep I get

Mine is in the kitchen diner, he sleeps on my very nice velvet sofa instead of in his very nice velvet bed. Seven months old, he quickly wore out his welcome on my bed messing about all night and batting my very nice ornaments off their surfaces.

I might try again when he is one !