Cat nighttime attention ... exhausted

[cantthinkofaname1991]

My adorable cat is goes through phases of waking me up in the night, sometimes for cuddles and sometimes to be escorted to her food (automatic feeder). This used to be once in a while but now it’s almost every night and I’m exhausted with interrupted sleep and can’t function like this anymore. Would it be mean to start to shut her in the kitchen overnight? I love her to bits but cannot cope with the long term sleep deprivation. Shes a rescue cat and has been indoor since we got her 8 years ago so she doesn’t go out at night. Please help!

Yes shut her in the kitchen. My two spend most of the day outside and then go in a big crate in the hall at night as just spend the night going round and waking everyone up otherwise

my cat is locked up in her bedroom overnight. We give her a Licky Lik and shut the door. Some nights she comes to get us to actually put her to bed if we’ve stayed up late! We have an indoor camera so we can check on her without disturbing her and she’s almost always asleep.
However, she’s been locked in there a night since we first rescued her.

Agree it’s ok to shut her out!
ours does this and it’s so annoying. Is there any way she can go outside in the day? At least that way she will have more stimulation and perhaps less active at night! I think they are naturally nocturnal so can be quite active at night. Good luck!

My cat started doing this and it turned out that she had an over-active thyroid. She now has daily medication and sleeps through the night again. Sounds like you should get some bloods done to rule out a medical reason.

Absolutely shut her out! It will drive you mad otherwise.

Our car lived to 18 and he was shut in the kitchen every night. If we didn’t, he climbed over us through the night. I wasn’t adverse to him wandering the house, or sleeping on our bed, but he’d paw at us and trample all over my pillow / hair and drive me loopy!

Thanks for all the replies so far, I wasn’t expecting this! It’s really helpful. I will definitely get her checked out at the vets to rule anything out- but it seems like keeping her in the kitchen overnight might be the best option with her food and litter tray. With having a toddler (who has only really just started sleeping through) and now this every night from the cat, I haven’t had a full nights sleep in about 3.5 years and it’s actually making me ill!!!! I do love cuddling with the cat, but it’s the yowling / scratching jumping all over me that’s the issue!

edited: sleep deprivation made me type months sleep instead of nights… 😅

Exact same thing happened with our cat, definitely get it checked out!

@cantthinkofaname1991 You mention yowling - that’s a hyperthyroidism symptom. Definitely get blood tested for this! Note: the medication doesn’t necessarily stop the yowling 🙄😬

Our previous cat did this every single night - we used to be able to get her to cuddle down in bed with us and settle until one of us was getting up for work, but it was a lot, no matter how adorable she was. Then Covid hit, and we were getting up later (because of WFH) and my DP said we needed to shut her in the kitchen. I resisted, but agreed to try it, and guess what - she was absolutely fine! We never went back. She used to trot through at a key word - beddy-bed.

We sadly had to say goodbye to her last year, and then adopted a little boy cat - after his initial settling in period he was in kitchen jail for bed right off. He knows the drill. His audio cue is my electric toothbrush. He’s only two and a much more active cat so he has a toy box in there as well as a bed, cat tree, litter etc. Some mornings look like this when you go through - a kind of budget mouse massacre movie.

Can I ask what you did for the initial settling in period @Judystilldreamsofhorses? And when and how did you transition to the kitchen?

When we adopted him? I guess just the standard stuff, tried to keep him mainly in one room (we didn’t shut him in it but did have food/litter/water/toys/bed etc all in the living room), did a lot of talking in low voices and saying his name when he was obviously frightened and so on. He had about three days of being quite hissy and hide-y, and I’d say it was a good three months before he was “our cat”.

In terms of the kitchen, once he got more settled and confident he started popping up in our bed early on. My partner travels abroad a lot for work, and I teach so have long spells of holidays. Last summer I was home by myself and just desperate for a long lie, and figured I would see how it went with shutting him in there overnight. It was fine!

We adopted him in April and that must have been July/August. He likes being up high and had taken to sleeping on top of the fridge during the day, so I popped an Amazon box with a blanket up there for him. The attached pic was yesterday - the box is barely even a box now but he still has a snooze in there at least once a week and we can’t bear to throw it out!