A few months ago, we got a cat. The shelter told us she was about a year old, but we estimate that she's younger than a year given her size and demeanor. Before I begin with the problem I'm having, I just want to say that I love this cat. She is extremely loving and playful, and is always happy just to be around us.
The problem, is that she needs constant attention. Let me explain.
I work from home, and my day normally starts at 5 or 6 in the morning. When I wake up (normally by being woken up by the cat), the cat wants to play right away. The 4 to 5 hours I get of sleep on average is obviously too long for her to go without stimulation. So when I wake up, I play with her a little. Sometime for 10 minutes, sometimes for 30. No matter how long I play with her, the moment I stop paying attention to her, she begins to meow. Loudly. It's whining, really. If I don't play with her, she will continue to do this for *literally hours*. Obviously, trying to work with that is absolutely infuriating. It's even more distracting because she meows in front of the bedroom door which wakes up my fiancée, so I constantly have to go move her or try to play with her to calm her down. Once my fiancée waes up however, she does calm down a little bit, but this still happens throughout the day once my fiancée has left for school/work.
After I'm done with my work, I always dedicate even more time to the cat. There are days where I play with her for hours, and also spend lots of time cuddling and petting her and everything. She is always more chill in the afternoon after I've had a chance to really play with her, but even then there are times where she gets into a loud meowing mood. The exception of course is when she naps, and she does nap for a very long time during the day which is a nice break. But once she's awake it's back to the grind. And when she naps too much during the day, then a sleepless night awaits.
She hates it when we try to sleep, she often tries to wake me up through the night by licking me or sometimes biting me. She only really does it to me, I figure because I spend the most time with her and do all the playing with her, being that my fiancée isn't home during the day. This has gotten better recently to be honest, but every now and then she acts out. I try to play with her a lot before bed to prevent this, many times playing with her for 30 minutes or more.
Now, I'm sure this is because she's bored, and I genuinely feel bad about that. I don't want to her to be unhappy, so I always try to play with her as much as I can, but it's just too much with work and everything. Obviously, it's starting to really affect my work life and my sanity. We live in a small apartment which I know is not ideal for a cat, but we have a cat tower for her with a jangly ball, two mouse toys, and one of those toys hanging from a big piece of elastic on a stick. I use all of these things when I play with her, and sometimes she even plays on her own.
Is this something all cat owners go through? Is she unhealthy mentally, or just being spoiled? Am I doing something wrong here, or is there something I can do better? I'm wary of getting even more toys for her since she really just wants my attention, but if there's something out there I can get to better entertain her I'd probably do it. Again, I don't want her to be unhappy or anything, I just can't always pay attention to her since I have to work.
Just to be thorough, I will mention that she's completely healthy and always has plenty of food/water, and we are very on top of having a clean litter box.
Tl;dr: My young cat constantly meows for attention while I work from home. In a day, I will play with her for a total of a few hours, but it's never enough. Once I'm done working it's not a huge deal because I can happily spend more time with her, but I have to play with her every 30 - 60 minutes or she begins to vocalize again (unless she sleeps).
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/anrt47/my_cat_needs_too_much_attention/
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