How to Deal with Pets Waking Us and Little Guy up to Get Feed?

lol sounds like cats to me. Try feeding them at 6 or 7 at night instead and see if it will change their internal clock.

There are automatic feeders that you set a timer and it dispenses dry food, you could set it for the middle of the night..

I used to have this same problem and now I leave the food dishes full of food for the whole day. This way they snack all day and they are in excellent condition. Some animals aren't meant to only be fed at certain times of the day and cats are one of them. Also cats will gorge themselves if they only feed a small amount so many times of a day. Try filling the bowls and make sure there bowls are at least 1/2 full. I think this will solve your problem. It will make them more content and less likely to wake everyone up when the hunger pang hits. Also Cats are not like dogs and will not gorge themselves silly. They only eat when hungry. Try it for a month.. I think you will find everyone will be happier.

we have 3 cats who will howl when hungry so we feed them immediately before we go to bed and then we put up a baby gate in the hallway so they can't get to the bedrooms. It's one of those gates that is removable by twisting the sides so it's easy to take down in the morning. If you have a good jumper of a cat, who can jump the gate like ours can, we also hang a blanket above the gate so he can't jump over the blanket. Lots of effort, but we sleep now!

Oh my gosh, my views on pets are really firm - cats are nocturnal, they are either outside or in the basement at night. There is no way I would have them jumping on my bed at 3:45 - which is the time they always seem to get me up if they are accidentally left inside. You've got to get them out of your bedrooms!

I'd love to know how much your cats weigh. Some cats are just BIG cats. Especially boys. I've had cats, lots of them, my whole life. My favorite cat was Charlotte. She was a regular old tabby. She weighed 25 to 30 pounds. She lived to 19 and never had any health problems. She died of old age. We never put her on a diet even though our vet always told us we needed too. We had three cats at the time and one had urinary problems, a siamese naturally. She was skinny and sickly so had to have science diet C/D food which is very high in fat. She couldn't have anything else or she'd have issues so all the cats ate that food and only that because we couldn't risk her getting their "diet" food.

As I said our cats ate when they wanted, what they wanted and were huge! Lived a long time and never dieted. Because of this experience when I was little I never cared what my cats weighed or how much they ate. The vet was very obviously full of it. We heard how they would die young and get diseases. LMAO! Nope never happened to those or any of the ones we subsequently had. They all lived a long happy lives. The only one that died before 15 was the sickly siamese!! My baby now is a tuxedo cat that is 10 and weighs only 18 pounds. He's my fat boy I say but he isnt' that bad. Healthy as a horse. Vet always tells us he needs a diet. I always say he's fine.

I personally would just feed on demand instead of giving them a stipen a few times a day. In the wild this wouldn't work! Cats go and feed when they are hungry. They would go hunt and eat. If you are terrible worried about their weight give them diet food instead of full fat... a good quality one of course! But I think you'd solve your own problem if you just let them have a "bottomless" bowl. They obviously don't agree or function well on your diet plan!

You do not have to do everything the way your cat's doctor wants you to do everything in regards to your cats. Leave them a bowl of dry kitty food outside your bedroom door. The other thing you could do is kennel the cats separately in a room where their noise cannot reach you, and let them out in the morning for breakfast. However I think you can give yourself a lot less grief by simply leaving cat food out for the cats all day. It's up to you! The cats do seem a tad more nervous than is normal for a cat...they are always in survival mode and more realistic than dogs that way. Dogs will do fine getting fed a couple times a day, they are not clever enough to think about their next meal. Cats, on the other hand, are very concerned with meals and they will not gorge themselves like dogs.

I have a similar situation. I also have 2 cats and 1 dog. 1 of my cats chews on/shreds paper when she is hungry. So in the middle of the night, I will hear R-R-R-R-I-I-I-I-P-P-P-P-P and it wakes me up. I shoe her out of our bedroom, but then she will go in my girls' room (they are 6 & 8) and do the same thing in there, waking up my 8 yo. I hate getting up at 3 am to feed the cats, but that is the only thing that stops her. Of course, then the dog wants to be let out and then he thinks I should be feeding him! I am thinking of putting a litter box in the basement and locking that 1 cat in the basement at night. My kids sleep all night, but I am still getting up at night for middle of the night feedings for the cat!
S.

Are they getting enough attention/exercise during the day? When our dogs are content, they sleep. When they're not they pester us.

My two cats do very well having dry food out all the time. If they run out of food, they wake me up early in the morning. If this doesn't work for you, try feeding them their evening meal when you go to bed, or at least later than 5:00. If you wake up at 3:00 am that is 10 hours since the cats have eaten, so they are probably hungry.

Apparently Cindy has never seen an obese cat. Cats can and do overeat. If you are working with your veterinarian on nutrition, please follow the vet's advice.

I think your best bet is to keep the cats away from sleeping areas. That may mean putting them in the basement, figuring out a gate solution, or simply shutting bedroom doors. Maybe you could also talk to your vet about dividing their daily feed into 3 meals; then you could give the evening meal later at night.

Good luck :)

Can you lock them in the basement, garage, or another room?

Sounds to me like you are just going to have to deal with it or feed them. You an purchase automatic food holders. You might end up with huge cats but at least you will get to sleep.

Have these cats always been like this? Did it start with the birth of your son? I know animals suffer from jealousy.I have a dog myself.

Sounds like they've got you wrapped around their little claws!

I would definately lock them in a room for the night until it's time for them to eat in the morning. I know it sounds cruel, especially if they're not used to it, but like child training, it should take them no more than a week to get used to their new situation. You can't have them ruling the roost, especially if you and your son are losing sleep over it.

Losing sleep is part of being a parent and/or pet owner. I have been woken up in the early morning (about 5:00 a.m.) to feed cats for over 25 years. It has become my usual sleep cycle. All the cats I have owned like to be fed very early in the morning. I always feed animals, or children, when they are hungry (and have never had an overweight animal or child). All the cats I've had have also liked to go outside, especially in the early morning, and would wake me if they weren't able to get out. Did yours enjoy going out, or did they still whine for you? If so, they are hungry.

You could try feeding them later at night, right before bed. You could leave out a small amount of dry food over night. (I've always had dry food out constantly and never have had an overweight cat.) You could check into lower fat food if weight is a concern, so they could eat more volume of food.

You could put a screen door over the doorway to your son's room, or some type of gate.

Keep the bowl full so they can self feed. It's better than abusing them by sticking them in the shower or withholding food until night time!

I agree; the weight of the cat doesn't matter, as long as when you look at him he doesn't look like a tub of lard. LOL

Animals are much like people; if they aren't getting what they need nutritionwise from their food, they will be hungry all the time. On the other hand, your guys have also learned that if they wake the baby and the masters lo and behold, food appears! It doesn't take them long to learn cause and effect.

After going through testing and discovering that everyone in our household has some sort of food allergy or intolerance, and the worse one is to gluten, I switched our dog and cat food to no-grains (that way, I don't have to worry about cross-contamination with our human food). I put out dry grain-free food for both the cat and dog in the morning (with a probiotic sprinkled on top), so that they can "graze" during the day if they like. The cat also gets a 1/3 can of an all-meat (no grain) wet food. Cats (and dogs) were not designed to exist on dry food; in the wild, they eat small animals they catch, with the occasional blade of grass for stomach upset, or maybe a carrot for a tasty treat. Our dog and cat both also get a small treat: the cat gets hard Whisker Lickins Crunch Lovers Tartar Control for his teeth for teeth cleaning, and the dog gets 100% dried liver bits.

Then they don't get fed again until nighttime, when my daughter goes to bed (8:30, 9:00, 9:30 pm). They both get treats again--the cat his his teeth cleaners, the dog either a 100% dried chicken or dried beef/tuna strip. The cat gets his 1/3 can of wet food again, and the dog gets a 1/3 of her 100% wet canned meat food (no grain) mixed in with her dry dog food that she didn't eat during the day (she always holds out for a human food handout).

We've been doing this now for about a month. The dog never bothers us anymore for food in the morning; the cat, however, is a different matter. I just think it's in a cat's nature to bother its human master for food. Our cat loves to eat. We could feed him all day long, if he had his way. His latest annoying trick is to bat at the blinds on the window, obsentiously to get us to open the window for him to sit in, but he usually sprints off to the kitchen when he sees he's awakened us and sits on top of his "cafe" (we put a large laundry basket over his food to prevent the dog from eating his food), waiting for us to feed him. Our response is to just ignore him and feed him on our time schedule. We'll get a lot of love and meows, some of the meows very strigent, but we're the "masters," not him. LOL

Hope you can figure out how to respond to your cats. Cats like to rule us, and they're harder to train than dogs, but they need to learn that humans control and rule the house and household--not the animals.

Good luck!

Our cat does the same thing. We finally had to buy a gate that he could not jump or scale and just keep him downstairs at night. I do not like it because he always used to sleep with us but he keeps us up and wakes the baby otherwise. I run a fan in the hallway to drown out the meowing when he gets mad about it...
Good Luck
A.

We lock our cats in the basement overnight. We moved their food, and the litter boxes were already down there. We had LOTS of issues with our cats waking us up all night, or waking our children up. This ended up being the best solution. I didn't like it at first, because I used to love sleeping with my cats, but honestly it worked out great in the end.
Good luck!