RP from Advice--I hope that's okay.
For reference, my partner and I have both had cats before, but the situations were different: his cat was an outside cat, and my cat lived with our dog until she was about 7 years old. Getting another cat is not an option for us.
We adopted a cat on Saturday, and we just love her. She's very sweet and soft, and she loves to cuddle. However, she will not let us sleep through the night. I know it's only been a few days, but we're already insanely tired.
She's younger than we originally intended to adopt (they estimated 6mo - 1yr old), so she's in that late kitten, early adolescent phase, which I think is part of the problem. But this still seems a bit much.
We've done what every website, video, and expert suggests: "feed her three meals a day instead of free feeding, play with her at meal times, and play with her before bed. If she bothers us at night, ignore her completely."
Give or take a half hour, her schedule is as follows:
- I wake up at about 7:30am and play with her for 10-15 minutes, then feed her half a can of wet food.
- My fiance comes home around 4pm, plays with her, and feeds her some dry food.
- At 10pm, about 2 hours before bed, we feed her. Then we play with her as much as she can from around 10:30-11:30. We try to go to sleep by midnight.
She'll sleep calmly and let us be until around 4-5am; then she starts. She'll attack our feet, sit on our heads, bite my hair...we had to cover our heads with the sheet last night to keep her away, and you could still feel her biting you. The experts insist that this will work within 2 weeks, but honestly, I'm worried this will be our every night.
We leave out toys for her at night, and she has a scratching post in the bedroom and a scratching pad in the living room. We have ordered more stuff for her from Chewy, including a cat tree, but it won't be here until the end of the week.
We HAVE considered locking her out of the room when we go to sleep, but we worry about her getting lonely. We both work full time, and she'd only see us for about 1.5 hours in the morning before we go to work. I know other people who lock their pets out of the bedroom at night, but they have more than one pet.
Please help us. We love her, but we are so tired.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/cwkjeg/our_cat_wont_let_us_sleep_at_night_please_help/
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