My cat keeps waking me up at 3 AM for food. What should I do?

You may want to try an automatic feeder. You can set the timer to feed in the night. He may be hungry and wakes you up to feed him. It will also distract him and give him something to do instead of waking you up. You can also play with him before bed and don’t let him sleep in the evening so he will sleep longer. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach to help you care for Prince Harold.

How frustrating! Unfortunately this is a common complaint. Cats are notorious for training their people to do all sorts of crazy things when it comes to their food. Right now Albert is requesting food early in the morning and you (reasonably) give him food/attention to quiet him, so he learns that meowing at ungodly hours is a successful strategy and keeps on doing it. What you need to do is change that dynamic. A couple ideas: 1) Ignore Albert until a certain time in the morning that you find acceptable. This is very hard at first and you'll sleep less, but he should get the idea after several days to a week. You must truly ignore him -- no positive or negative responses to his attempts to interact. 2) Switch to an automatic feeder that dispenses a set amount of food at certain intervals and then ignore all Albert's request for you to feed him. He'll learn bugging you doesn't results in food. You'll still need to ignore him in the early morning until he learns you're not available 3) Make sure you're giving him lots of attention and environmental enrichment during the day. The Indoor Pet Initiative (by Ohio State University) has some great ideas for this. If none of this work, consider talking with your vet or a veterinarian behaviorist. Good luck!

Congratulations on your new kitten Seamus! There's not likely a great way to train him not to do this in the morning. This is a common cat behavior and they wake us up because they are ready to start the day and they want to eat. Some cats act like this even if they have food in the bowl (they like the ritual). One thing you could try is getting an automatic feeder and set it to go off in the morning. Then Seamus may be distracted by the feeder and may leave you alone a bit longer. I hope this is helpful and please feel free to post any additional questions!

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Jordan. If she is crying for food, you can set an automatic cat feeder to go off at 6am to heopfully distract her and give you a bit more sleep. I hope this information helps!

I often recommend trying a programmable feeder for this problem. You can program the feeder to provide an amount of food at a certain time, and dogs are generally smart enough to know that the machine (and not you!) provides the food at a certain time and will sit in front the feeder until the meal shows up!

I certainly sympathize with your situation. I have a few suggestions that have helped me with my cats. Remember that cats are naturally nocturnal, so they want to be active at night. Cats are also hunters, so one of the best ways to satisfy both of these instincts is to find ways for Monty to hunt his food at night. One of my favorite things for cats is a no bowl feeding system like Doc & Phoebe ( https://docandphoebe.com/ ) that requires them to "hunt" for their food. You could also try a feeding ball, but those are a little more noisy at night. Finally, I have used a timed feeder to open at 5 am (since that is when my cats start), but you could set that to open at 3:30 am which might give you some peace and quiet. I have used the Cat Mate C20 for years and it works wonderfully. http://pet-mate.com/us/product-category/pet-feeders-us/ Good luck! I hope that was helpful and gives you some ideas. Thanks for using PetCoach.

You may want to try an automatic feeder. You can program it to release a certain amount and at a certain time. Eventually Steeve will not associate you with food anymore, although it may take a few weeks. Best of luck and thank you for using Pet Coach.