Cat question
 

As you all may recall I adopted a cat a few months ago. He's wonderful except for two things: He wakes up way too early (5:30 or 6 AM) and is quite noisy and wants to play rough in bed. (Please no perve comments) He jumps at my fingers or hands if they're outside the covers - I do know about never playing with fingers or hands and I don't, but for some reason when it comes to sleeping in my bed he doesn't get it. He'll go after my fingers when they aren't even moving.

He is fixed and 2 1/2 years old if that matters. I hate the thought of shutting him out of my bedroom, but I have to sleep, so help me out on this one. Thanks!

You might have to shut him out of the room. My cat used to bite my feet while I slept and I couldn't find any way to stop him.

One of my 912 cats attacks feet in the morning. I just shove him off the bed, go back to sleep and hope that once he gets a little older (he's almost 2) he stops.

Learn to sleep through ANYthing like me :D

One of our cats was the same way, but once you shut him out, he would howl nonstop. I found him a toy that he absolutely could not resist and that seemed to help when he was frisky in the mornings. (The toy that worked for our little guy, who's also fixed and about the same age, is this hideous fur mouse thing that hangs from a door frame on an elastic string...)

If all else fails, you could get up and feed the guy, because he might just be trying to get you up for food. That is asking for him to stay in that habit though, and is rewarding his bad behavior... so ignore that last bit of advice!

My two babies pretty much grew out of it. They were bad about jumping at my feet when I was asleep. If I put them out in the hall, they whined and sounded pitiful and made me feel bad. One of them will still walk all over me if he wants me to get up.

I have that problem as well, but only on weekends because I get up at about 515 every day for work so they all wake up with me. We asked our vet a while back when they were waking up at like 3 am, and she suggested that if you feed them canned food at night, to do it later because cats will tend to fall asleep right after they eat the older they get. so maybe try and feed him a little later? It seems to work with mine.

As far as the biting stuff...I know it may sound ridiculous, but hiss at your cat, I've read that in a few places and when I've done it with mine he's stopped. I also do the whole lock them out if they are being too rambunctious. It's like a cat time out.

I have four...yes, I'm the crazy cat lady...but one is my fiance's cat, and we are stopping now. =)

I have a cat question.

I have always had a bad allergy to cats. Always have to take the benadryl when I am around them.

So do ya'll think I'd be allergic to tigers, lions, bobcats, ocelots, etc...

I've always wonderd about that...

That's nothing. My cat likes to make sweet love to our pillows.

That made me laugh to think of you sitting there with four cats crawling all over you with you hissing at them! :D I have one cat that is so sensitive that if you make a noise remotely like hissing, his face literally falls and he looks soo sad! I couldn't bring myself to do it again

Heh. Four isn't bad. ;)

I would just shut him out. He sounds like he's excitable and playful enough that he'd entertain himself some other way. I'll bet his feelings won't be too hurt.

He messes with you when your sleeping - you mess with him when he's sleeping... or at least that's the system my cats and me work on.

Hehe, yeah funny thought. It's not that they are all bad, just apparently when you play with them or they do something bad I was reading that you act like a cat for a sec and they think, "Whoa!" in the Keanu Reeves sort of way and then stop. I've also been told telling them no and blowing in their faces work, but that just doesn't seem nice.:p

I have 2 cats and they both grew out of this behavior for the most part. Although on the weekends they are known to hiss at each other and chase each other around. There's not a whole lot you can do except put a pillow over your head and roll over and go back to sleep.

I've got a question as well about cats.

I got all of these brochures on how to make your cat stop scratching furniture. (Making it smell like citrus, using tin foil, placing the scratching post in front of the ailing chair, etc.)

But what if they just like scratching the carpet? Or the floor? It was something I noticed in the cat I was interested in at the SPCA. The first thing it did was start scratching the carpeted mat on the ground.

Any ideas?