He screams in the night. This is not a new issue, he always has been a loud, complaining cat, but lately he has perfected his timing. By "perfected," I of course mean "maximized its effectiveness as a form of torture."
I go to bed at 10. I have a formal, keep-the-old-cat-happy bedtime ritual. After the dogs make their last potty trip I put them in my room away from the cat food, give the old man a fresh can of Fancy Feast, make sure he has fresh water, and then it's lights out. Note, the cat has fresh food and water, as well as an entire house full of soft, comfy places to sleep. He is welcome in the bedroom and sometimes deigns to join us in the bed, but other nights he will choose to sleep in the living room. It's entirely up to him.
So I get in bed and turn out the lights, and it starts: MRRRRAWWWWWWWW!!! MMMRRRAAAAAWWWW!! THE CAT SCREAMS.
I scream back at the cat: "SHUT UP!!!"
Cat mumbles a bit, usually quiets down.
Anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours later: MRRRAAAWWW!! MRRRAWWWWW!
I scream profanities at cat.
Rinse, repeat, all night.
All...freaking...night, or at least until 2 or 3 am, when he actually comes into the bedroom and sleeps on the foot of the bed until the alarm goes off at 5:30. He's fine, but my lack of solid REM sleep is going to make me psychotic.
And then there's the food. After months of trial and error and wasting a lot of food at 50+ cents a can, I have discovered that there is exactly one food - ONE particular flavor of Fancy Feast, to be precise - that this hairy little bastard will eat. I thought I'd figured it out, I really did, and I got over-confident last week. I thought I was doing the right thing, and bought an entire case of what I thought was his favorite flavor - tuna and cheddar in gravy. He licked the gravy off and left most of the food, and complained even more. I examined the can, and then examined the labels of similar cans. Ruh-roh. So yesterday I brought home a couple of cans of the whitefish and cheddar and gravy, and he cleaned his plate. Once again, I had failed His Majesty. Note the labels:
Clearly, my error - how could anyone fail to distinguish between the Perfect Food (on the left) and the Awful Food (on the right)? I am clearly an incompetent Catservant. I wish he'd fire me. But anyway, he ate two cans, one at lunch and one at dinner, and cleaned his plate each time. Yay! It took a while, but I found the food he likes at last!
So last night, I felt a faint flicker of hope at bedtime. We went through the ritual, I opened the can of the Bestest Flavor Ever, went to the bedroom, turned out the light, and in less than three minutes:
MRRRRRAAAAAOOOOWWWW!! MRRRRRAAAOOOWWWW!!!!
Remember, when you fall in love with a cute little kitten, a couple of decades later you'll be living with a crazy old fart like ME.
8 comments:
That is too funny! Of course Jack (my cat) does the same thing and has trained the new adoptee (Jill) - so they tag-team me in the middle of the night!
Higgins definitely wants in.
Sometimes I miss my very last wonderful cat so much that a kitten temps me but, then I remember the shedding. I just enjoy friend's cats and stick to poodles for pets. They can be trained to not yap.
Dear old Vegemite (22y 7m) used to stand in the shower, facing INTO the tiled corner and BELLOW like the town bull. Very effective amplification.
When young she used to make very subtle and discreet remarks, but the older she got, the louder.
She was a great personality, and we miss her, but not the midnight chorus.
Gae, in Callala Bay
Gae, every time you mention that dear old Vegemite made it to 22-1/2, my blood runs cold. :-)
As our cat got increasingly older and more senile she did something similar. It seemed like if we were upstairs, she would lose track of us in the house and forget that she could come upstairs to find us. So she would sit downstairs and meow loudly. Sometimes I could stick my head over the bannister and say "we're up here!" and she would come up the stairs to join us. Increasingly we would just make a habit of bringing her upstairs with us and she would be perfectly happy.
So maybe bringing Higgins into the bedroom at the start of the night might help, if it is the same sort of problem.
Nancy - it isn't. He will sit on the back of the couch, look INTO THE BEDROOM (one level here) and scream like a smoke alarm. I call him in, he comes in, gets petted, hangs out a bit, decides to leave - and an hour later, MRRRAAOOOOWWWW! And when I say he sounds like a smoke alarm, I am not exaggerating. My neighbor heard him for the first time and called to me to ask if I'd heard that "poor screaming cat!" Um, yeah, he's mine. Sorry.
Miz C,
One thing that is a sign of hyperthyroid disease in older cats is howling - I ran my own professional pet sitting company for a long time & specialized in cats - is there a chance that your old fellow has this condition or does he really just want Mom?
XOXO
He had a physical a couple of months ago, and aside from a hint of kidney problems (not surprising in an ancient cat, and not bad enough to be a concern) he's fine. I suspected thyroid too, but nope, it's normal.
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