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At wit's end with cat
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 |
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