First of all, this is still attention and, as with troublemaking children, even negative attention is attention, and reinforces outbursts. Let’s start out with the most important message here: Never scold or punish your cat for waking you up, either from activity or vocalizing.
We’re certainly not advocating that you neglect your cat (ever!), but you’ll need to practice a little selective hearing while trying to retrain kitties-of-the-night. If you need to leave for work, play as close to leaving time as possible. If you’re home all day, play later in the morning. Likewise, if you’re an early riser, don’t play as soon as you wake up, because this is equally too close to your sleeping schedule. This is closer to bedtime, and only encourages nighttime activity. If you’re out working all day, try to play as soon as you get home instead of unwinding or doing chores first and playing later when you’re relaxed. It doesn’t take much, but it has to happen, and if you’re trying to change nighttime patterns, you want to do this as far away from your own bedtime as possible.
As with the tree above, this can be as simple as a few minutes with a laser pointer, waving a feathery wand for a bit, or batting a ball or noisy mouse around together. If your kitty doesn’t have another cat in the house to play with during the day, it’s especially important that you initiate play daily. It’s a wild misconception that house cats are aloof and antisocial creatures, and every cat will benefit from play with those it trusts. It doesn’t take much daytime activity to start changing a cat’s patterns, so consider some 5-minute activities here and there throughout the day to be a huge win in training a cat to sleep at night. Every minute spent considering, scratching, swatting, climbing, and choosing is a minute spent not sleeping. These choices and movements may seem small to us, but they’re a big deal to your kitty. Mental stimulation is as important as physical in keeping your cat occupied during the day, so the multi-tiered approach of a tree like the Rizzo, along with toys placed in unusual locations, promotes plenty of decision-making and additional activity. Whenever your cat approaches the tree’s beds to doze off, he’ll find a variety of toys to inspire some exercise and play before the laziness sets in.
Step one is to inspire your cat to play more and sleep less in the afternoon, when your kitty would otherwise disappear to a cozy spot and snooze the day away, and the Rizzo is a perfect stepping stone to this new lifestyle.
CATS ARE NOT NOCTURNAL UPGRADE
*Okay, there’s some debate that cats are, in fact, crepuscular, which means they are most active at dawn and dusk, but this has the same result of interrupted sleep for you and the jury will never reach a consensus on nocturnal versus crepuscular for our domesticated felines, so feel free to move ahead in life accepting that cats are nocturnal.Įvery kitty should have a cat tree of some sort for a variety of reasons-elevated resting places bring a sense of security and an appropriate place to scratch spares your human furniture, just for starters-but if you have a nighttime menace on your hands you’re ready to upgrade to a more interactive tree, like the Rizzo from Mau. Of course, this may also seem like bad news with a lifetime of sleepless nights in store, but here’s the really good news: Just as you can be trained to work a night shift and sleep all day, your cat can be trained to play in the day and sleep at night, and it doesn’t take much more than some intelligent cat furniture, scheduled play time, and some personal discipline on your part. Cats are nocturnal* and there’s nothing abnormal or spiteful about what yours is up to. Good news: You’re right! Whiskers is not a jerk. You’re here because you need someone to confirm that cats are nocturnal, because it’s too difficult to believe that your sweet kitty is just a jerk. Let us guess: Your precious furbaby is becoming a bit of a night terror, suddenly finding the energy to zoom around the house in the wee hours or pouncing you in your bed just as the sun is about to rise.
0 kommentar(er)
