My cat will not stop banging into the pet gate and meowing. Advice?

Hi y’all,

I have two shelter cats that are sisters. We have had them since they were four months old, and they will be two years old in April. One cat is very quiet and doesn’t meow much, the other goes through periods where she will meow and howl almost nonstop. We’ve lived in the same house the whole time, and the only new-ish factor is the pet gate. We’ve had it for a month, but we took our cats back to our hometown for about two weeks at Christmas, so they’ve only had about two weeks with it up. The gate is located in a small hallway because it blocks the cats off from our bedroom doors, but let’s them have access to most of the house (kitchen and living room, meaning they have access to food, water, litter box, etc.) We only use the gate at night because the loud cat would sit outside our bedroom doors and meow, scratch, bang her head into the doors, and chew up the carpet right outside the doors. She would do this right as we were going to bed, for probably 20mins, and then at 5-6am, like clockwork. In the morning, she would do it because she was hungry, and would stop once she was fed.

In the first week of having the gate, she would sit and meow for a small period of time and then walk away for the rest of the night. For the second and third weeks, we were in our hometown and she was sleeping/eating/shitting in the same bedroom as one of us (our parents have dogs and cats that they don’t get along with). Now, we are ending our fourth week with the gate and second week that they’ve been exposed to it. She will bang her head against the gate and howl almost nonstop starting at 5am. It’s 7am right now and I haven’t been back to sleep because she just ended this behavior at about 6:45am. I fed the cats and made sure they had water at 5am. She proceeded to come back to the gate as soon as I was in bed again. I have sprayed her with water, and she still comes back.

I’m not sure if she acts like this because she wants in my sister’s room, or doesn’t like having closed doors. In the beginning, my sister would leave her bedroom door open 24/7 and they would sleep with her. I never did this, as it affected my sleep and flared my allergies up at night. My sister stopped sleeping with the cats after about six months (the quiet one loves to sit on your face in the middle of the night). The loud cat has started sitting at her bedroom door and meowing, even when she’s not home, and she does this when the pet gate is open now. My sister is moving due to getting a job, so I am getting a new roommate today. I already know she’s going to complain about my loud cat, and for good reason, as I can’t stand her early morning behavior either.

Any advice? Should I keep the pet gate closed and locked 24/7? Will she get used to it and stop this behavior? Is there anything I can do to make her stop? She seems to have quit after an hour and a half, but I can’t stand to lose this much sleep each night.

submitted by /u/highzen_
[link] [comments]

from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/adtkis/my_cat_will_not_stop_banging_into_the_pet_gate/