I recently moved in to a three bedroom apartment with a couple of close friends, one of whom owns a cat who is a 7 y/o male. I grew up with two cats in my household and I was excited to live with a cat again but there are some behavioral issues I’ve never experienced before.
The little guy meows for an hour straight both before and after his meal times, which means 7 - 9 AM he is raising hell since he gets breakfast at 8 and 4 - 6 PM he starts raising hell again since he eats dinner at 5. When his owner isn’t around to feed him personally he has an automatic feeder he loads in the morning.
His owner also frequently spends entire days away from the apartment (not an exaggeration, we are talking leaves at 7 am and is back at 1 - 4am) and on those days his cat will meow starting from around midnight to whenever he eventually comes home.
My first thought was that he was just getting settled in to the new place and was stressed, but then I learned that “he’s just always done this”. Apparently the owner’s dad is a very early riser and when the cat would be left at the parents house when his owner was out of town etc. he would be fed whenever he caused a ruckus, even at 5AM.
To further complicate the issue his cat has some urinary issues and is required to eat prescription food for the rest of his life so the medical issue causing it because of discomfort or something can’t be ruled out. Both of my cats growing up had the same issue and they never did this but you never know.
It normally wouldn’t be that much of an issue, but this cat can really MEOW. I sleep with -40dB ear plugs and it’s the only sound that has ever been able to wake me up through them. With this happening some days in the dead of night and also again early in the morning I’m losing some serious sleep.
We resorted to trying to untrain the behavior using a squirt bottle after talking with his owner and getting it ok’d, but that isn’t working. It’s turned the routine into meow-hide-get squirted-repeat instead of helping at all.
I then read online that a cat’s stomach can get upset if they go longer than 12 hours between meals so I brought it up to his owner and he adjusted his feeding schedule so he eats the same overall amount of food but in 3 portions instead of 2 now at 8, 4, and midnight but that has just resulted in 3 guaranteed meowing sessions so in a way it’s made the problem worse.
I’m at a complete loss for ideas here. I know some cats are just vocal breeds but at the bare minimum I need to find a way to where it isn’t destroying my sleep schedule. Thanks for taking the time to read this and thank you for your help.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/pjo730/help_with_my_roommates_cat_and_incessant_meowing/
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