hey preston
i was listening to an animal behavourist on the radio today, talk back
stuff, people ringing with pet problems. i thought of you and your cat.
anyway, no one rang with the same problem as yours, but many of her
solutions for difficult behaviour were based on a vet consultation for
drug therapy. she advocated drugs in conjunction with behaviour
modification for the really hard cases.
i'd hate to think of you losing your cat, he sounds rather nice in most
ways. and his sister might suffer as a result.
do let us know how you're getting on.


Preston Crawford wrote:
This has been like a 2 year oddessy. We have a very loving, adorable
black cat. Likes to be a lap cat. Takes very good care of his sister (we
adopted litter-mates) and is overall a great cat. There's one problem.
He's REALLY needy at night and he's made our nights hell for the last
two years.

From the start we've had a closed-door policy. Mostly because one of our
first cats would jump on us at 3am and given that my wife and I both
have insomnia that won't work. No problem with that cat. Door closed, he
goes and finds something else to do. Opus, however, begin incessantly
scratching on the door and waking us up. So we searched around places
like this and our first attempt at getting our nights back was to open
the door and let him in. The other cat had grown up enough that he was
happy to be at the foot of the bed or in the closet. So we thought we
had a solution. Opus, however, insisted on biting our fingers to play
and in my case (since I use a CPAP for apnea that blows out air) batting
at my head and scratching. So we sought help again. Someone said get a
squirt bottle. After like 3 weeks of squirting him and him not getting
the hint we closed the door again and tried the vacuum cleaner trick.

Well, that worked for all of 2 weeks until one day I found out from my
wife that she was waking up up to 5 times a night to plug the vacuum in.
Then someone at a pet store told us that baby gates were the way to go.
They can't be scratched and they're a barrier. So we bought two and
tried that. Now we're in an arms race with Opus. We put up a baby gate,
he jumps it. We put up two staggered, he jumps between them like an
acrobat. We STACK them going almost all the way to the ceiling and he
jumps on the bannister instead. We put a large laundry basket on the
bannister and he jumps into the laudry basket and slides onto the floor.
Last night my wife woke up twice because now, in spite of putting a towl
over the top of the baby gates, lest he scale them, he managed to jump
over the 6 feet worth of baby gates.

In other words the situation has gone from ridiculous to he's getting
locked in a closet soon. I don't want to lock him in a closet at night.
I don't want to give him away. But this is getting ridiculous. He's been
disturbing our already poor sleep for 2 years now. And he won't quit.
We've tried virtually everything you're supposed to try. We didn't even
list half of the things, like the "no scratch" spray on the door, stuff
like that. We don't know what to do. We're at a point now where we have
to barricade ourselves in our own bedroom with 6 feet of baby gates, a
towel draped over it and a giant hamper guarding the flank with the
bannister and he's still finding a way over. I have to give him credit
for tenacity, but it's getting really really really really really old.
We just want decent sleep. We already have sleep problems without Opus
making it worse. And at this point it's gone from a nuisance to "please
tell us, Opus, why we shouldn't find a new home for you?"

Please help give any advice possible. We don't want to give up on him,
but we need sleep.

Preston