Keep Your Cats Asleep With 3 Steps
You beg and you plead, but whether it’s 3 am yowling or 5 am paw pokes to the face, your cat just won't let you snooze! Thankfully, there is usually a very simple solution: adjust their circadian rhythm.
But what the heck is a circadian rhythm and how do I adjust it?!
Circadian Rhythm
To put it simply, the circadian rhythm is our brain’s 24-hour cycle of sleepiness and alertness, and its something that all living things share.
Before humans came along, a cat would have been typically more active at night, but over many generations, domestic cats have become more active during the day to coincide with our schedules. Regardless, they still have some nocturnal tendencies, namely the tendency to annoy the crap out of me when it’s Sunday morning and I’m trying to sleep off this hangover from staying up too late eating popcorn and watching The Great British Bakeoff!
So how do we finish the job that generations of evolution haven’t? In three simple steps!
Establish a feeding schedule (no more free feeding!)
Tire them out
Ignore them
Establish a Feeding Schedule
I know it’s not easy to commit to feeding your cats multiple times a day. You have a life! You have a job! You have to watch GBBO and forget about all the BS you put up with today!
“Why should I feed my cats on a schedule anyway?”
First, cats tend to sleep after a big meal. Feeding on a schedule allows us to give them their biggest meal right before our bedtime, causing them to naturally become sleepy.
Second, like cats themselves, circadian rhythms are highly affected by consistency. A well-established feeding schedule allows them to lock in set times to snooze and digest. While scheduled feeding trains their mind and body to go with the flow, free-feeding doesn’t allow them to properly digest their food in cycles, encouraging a chaotic life filled with those dang yowls and paw pokes
Feed your cats a diet consisting of 100% wet and/or raw food. There are many health reasons, but the primary being that ideally, cats acquire most of their moisture from their prey instead of drinking water directly. When on a dry diet, cats are usually in a state of mild dehydration, which puts stress to their kidneys, liver, and metabolism and can lead to health issues
Start slow - As with any major changes, it’s important to make this adjustment slowly instead of all at once, or you’re likely to receive some major behavioral backlash. If you are free-feeding dry food, keep the dry food out as you begin to feed on a schedule, but leave less and less out until you are leaving none. This way, your cutie likely won’t even notice the change. If switching to wet or raw food, begin mixing a bit of the new food in with the old, gradually upping the ratio until only the new food is being served
Feed at least 2 times a day, preferably 3. Ideally, your cat will not go without food for more than 6-8 hours at a time. Since most folks are gone for longer than that during the day, it’s okay to move those times around as necessary. For me, this means feeding my 6 darlings at about 8 am, 4 pm, and 10 pm each day. Feed the largest meal right before bedtime if you want to give them an extra sleepiness boost
Feeding is only one part of the solution though. Let’s talk about playtime!
Tire Them Out
Let’s face it, our cats have it easy. Gone are the days when they had to find, catch, and kill their food every day, now they just sit there and stare at you with those hungry eyes, meowing at you to hurry up and grabbing your ankles if you show any signs of slowing. This is because regardless of their domestication, our cuties still crave the hunt, and it’s up to us to simulate that experience the best we can!
Malcolm is almost tired enough, but not quite!
Play with your cats whenever they are feeling active throughout the day, but right before their mealtimes is ideal. Most importantly, you should schedule a play session for no more than 1.5 hours before you go to bed, followed by their final feeding
Use interactive toys that your darling can physically catch and “kill.” Here are a few of my favorites!
Go Cat Da Bird - This is the best toy I've found, it spins and really gets them excited. It’s intuitive and even fun to use! As with any wand toy, make sure not to leave it out afterward because feathers and strings can be dangerous to unsupervised cats. Instead of buying the expensive refills, I prefer to hot-glue my own feathers in to replace the broken ones!
Go Cat Teaser Cat Catcher - This is a ground toy that most cats love, it has a bristly hair body they love to chew on and a thin cable that makes it move realistically while not being too visible
PURRfect Cat Toys Crinkle Bouncer - Cats like to chew on its feathers and crinkly paper-like innards, so it makes a great toy to finish off a play session by letting them "kill" it
Yeowww! Catnip Banana - This company makes great catnip-filled toys. They use very durable fabric, their own brand of powerful catnip, and they are great for solo play! They have lots of designs, but I find the banana is one of the most universally-liked
SmartyKat Hot Pursuit - This electronic toy is the most durable and fun that I've found and is a good way to distract your cat for a few minutes if you don't have time to play right when they need it. Cats are quick to learn the patterns of most electronic toys, so don’t expect the fun to last forever
Keep in mind that your cats will get bored with toys pretty quickly if they use the same ones all the time, but if you rotate them by putting one or more away for a week or two, they will hold your cat’s interest longer
During your play session, aim to tire your cuties to the point of exhaustion several times. This means playing until they stop and lie down, giving them a few moments to rest, playing some more until they are once again tired, giving a few more moments to rest, and then playing one more time. Cats are built for short bursts of energy, not endurance, so this is the ideal way to wear them out. Make sure you get those cuties running and jumping as much as possible!
Ignore Them
So you’ve started feeding your angels on a schedule and playing with them before bed, but they are still waking you up at 5 am, begging for that morning snack! That’s because there is one final step in this process, you gotta ignore them completely. That means no yelling, no caving to their demands, no politely asking them to give you just 10 more minutes of sweet slumber before you have to get up and begin your long day of being told what to do by some human who could probably use a little more playtime themselves. No, you have to completely ignore their pitiful cries and block out their sad, soulful eyes as they stare down at you from atop your chest. Easier said than done, right? I said this would be simple, not easy! If your cat won’t stop talking all night during the adjustment period, you may wish to consider keeping them out of your bedroom while you snooze, though many cats will find this even more frustrating and will retaliate with more meows and possibly even scratching at the door. Whatever you do, it’s important that you do not give in to their cries, they will remember!
