I don't know if you've heard, but we have a cat. His name is Tiny and he's the sweetest kitty with a lot of personality, but also kind of a pill sometimes.
I've been pretty good about reigning in some of his worst craziness, although he still eats any carbohydrate we happen to leave out on the counter while we're gone, and he can't be in the same room with us when we're eating sushi. Generally though he actually listens to me when I say things like "No" and "Get down". Sometimes he gives me lip in the form of a pitiful meow in protest, but he does what I say.
However, I can't figure out how to curb this one behavior of his that drives me up the wall. Specifically, as soon as there is any sort of movement from Jason and me in the morning indicating we might possibly be awake, Tiny starts meowing for us to feed him. This has gone through stages. He used to yell and yell, even going so far as to stand on our headboard and yell while looming over our heads. But that just got him thrown out of the bedroom.
I think he finally figured out that if he's sweet, he's treated more nicely. His latest thing has been to utter a few purry meows and then snuggle up right next to my face, purring as loud as possible in a "Look how cute and sweet I am. Don't you want to feed me?" kind of way.
However, he may have recently determined* that being sweet doesn't get him fed any faster because this morning he made several quiet meows, and then jumped on the bed and walked over the hill of Jason, into the valley, and then over the hill of Kelly in the quest of waking us up. This was all done quietly, but insistently. The second I got out of bed he started meowing hysterically. It's like he thinks if he doesn't yell, we will never feed him.
This happens when I come home from work too. Hysterical meowing. On weekends if I'm home during the day it starts about mid-afternoon because Tiny sees that it is getting dark and I'm home so it must be dinner time. I ignore him and have even gone so far as to locking him in the guest room so that I could get some peace for the couple of hours until dinner time. And since I'm the one who feeds him most of the time, I'm the one who gets pestered.
Jason doesn't mind it as much as I do, but the incessant meowing when I'm trying to get that last 10 or 15 minutes of precious sleep Drives. Me. Crazy.**
So what do I do? It's not like other behaviors where I can either say "No" or ignore the annoying thing he is doing rather than giving him his way. I can't starve the cat. So every morning and evening I'm reinforcing this bad behavior because all he knows is that he yells, he gets food.
Any ideas?
*And I fully acknowledge that I may be giving my cat a little too much credit here.
** However, we now have this little routine in the mornings. I get up and feed him and then go to the gym. When I get home from the gym, he follows me around until I pick him up, and then he purrs and purrs and lays his head on my shoulder. He really is a love.
9 comments:
Ah, Tiny... That cat's name gives no indication whatsoever of his level of personality. I love telling the story about the time he ate the cake.
Anyway, it may be that he's had some kind of upheaval recently and that's his way of expressing it. For example, when Mr. H-B finally moved into the house, Greta responded by persistently vomiting on her own chair. And pacing. Hours and hours of pacing on the linoleum in front of the door.
It could be something as small as the time change, which has thrown Greta into a total tail-spin (what they say about dogs being like toddlers is totally true). Or something bigger.
Good luck! There's nothing like a pet persistently making a racket to put you over the edge of sanity.
Mrs. H-B, it's actually not a new behavior. He's always done this whether there is upheaval or not. So he has no excuse!
My cat does this all the time if I move at all when I'm in bed. I don't get up to feed her, but she still does it daily. Other than that, a sweetie!
ha ha...yeah, my cats are like this in the morning and when I get home too, but they do it even when they have food so I think they just want attention.
And they meow like they are starving to death when I cook my own food, even if it's something like toast! I don't know why they started doing it as I never feed them human food.
Okay, so MLM has a suggestion. That is, you need to associate meowing with not getting fed and associate not meowing with getting fed. The trick here is to feed him when he is not meowing. This might be tricky if he's a light sleeper or starts hovering over your bed at 3:00 a.m. -- but the idea would be to get up before him and get the food out. Not sure what you'd do in the evening though. Although, putting up with a few evenings of yowelling until he finally stops and then feeding him immediately might get the point accross. It's an association issue.
Another thought: what is the temperment of this cat? Is he agitated in some way? With animals any extreme behavior may indicate an emotional problem -- like you said he acts like he will never be fed without yelling about it. That may mean he's nervous about your dependability -- something in his past may have caused this. Another possibility is perhaps he has synapses in his brain that haven't connected properly so he feels hungry all the time. This happens with humans sometimes. Finally, maybe he's just a little high-strung. Maybe you need to give him some kitty-downers to help him relax and be cool, calm, and collected like kittys usually are.
I would talk to Tiny's vetranarian about this and maybe get him to a specialist for it. After all, if you're not happy about the situation, I suspect Tiny's not happy either, so get him some help!
T-K
hah, Tiny LOVES human food - he discovered it when he was a kitten through no fault of Jason's. He used to dig through the trash.
Dad, I've often thought that Tiny's experience when he was a baby might be to blame. His mother was killed somehow and the kittens were very small and starving when they were found. They were nursed back to health and spoon fed and were fine, but those first few days must have been very traumatic. In every other way he's a very normal cat. He relaxes and he plays normally. Like I mentioned, he even listens to me now when I discipline him and doesn't attack our food when we eat (which is what he did when Jason and I started dating and he was about 10 months old. You couldn't eat anything around him and he always had to be locked away when we ate)
And there's really no way to get up before him. As soon as I get out of bed in the morning (and I'm up at 6 to go to the gym) he's on me to feed him. I've also tried to wait him out in the evening, but there's no way. He doesn't stop meowing until he's fed.
I definitely don't want to put him on any sort of medication. The feeding thing is really his only high-strung issue.
Mogget is the same way. The only way I got him to stop meowing in the morning is to stop feeding wet food in the morning. I've always left out dry food all the time, but now I feed the whole can of wet food at night instead of half morning/half night. Tildrum never acts this way, but his meow is a little squeak anyway!
Part of it is that he might just want to talk to you. I talk back to Mogget and get something out to play with him in the evenings when he's like that, and it calms him down. Then we can both eat in peace.
Also, you need this: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/11/10/funny-pictures-there-is-no-snooze-button-on-cat-who-wants-breakfast/
Ha! I love that lolcat. That's hilarious.
We don't leave food out for Tiny because he inhales everything that's placed in front of him. If we gave him a whole bowl of dry food to eat at his leisure, he would just scarf the whole thing down that second and come looking for more.
Personally I think you are lucky that Tiny just meows. My cat used to lick my fingers to get me out of bed in the mornings. I hated that feeling so much that I'd jump right out of bed when its sandpaper tongue scraped across my fingertips.
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