To Becky
Taylor, about Callie the cat.
First let me
compliment you on choosing a fine, aristocratic name for your cat. I
had a calico cat I named Calpurnia, Callie for short. It's an obvious
name for Calico, but more fun, Calpurnia was the name of Caesear's
wife. In my high school Latin class, there was a Kallie Eastman, whom
the teacher promptly renamed Calpurnia Oriensvir. The rest of the name
is a translation of the English. Oriens is the root of words like
Oriental (a person from the East), and to orient (get one's bearings
or point oneself or an object in the right direction) from the custom
of Jews and Arabs to pray toward the East. Vir is the root of virile
(manly, not sissified), virility (the quality of being a
stud-muffin), and virus (because the germ is tough like a man should
be).
Cats do not
sleep through the night. It is cat nature to get up and prowl. Cats in
the wild hunt mostly at night; they are nocturnal animals. Also, cats
sleep a lot in the day. If you slept most of the day, you wouldn't
sleep all night either.
So, the
challenge is not so much to get Callie to sleep through the night, but
to convince her that she should not come around disturbing the sleep
of her humans. There are various approaches that can be used.
Callie can
learn to sleep more in the night if she gets less sleep in the day. We
do this with our cats; we make sure to spend some time in vigorous
play during late evening. This works by assuring that the cats will
sleep long enough at bedtime that the humans are fully asleep and not
easily bothered by a bit of innocent cat prowling. Please feel free to
interrupt daytime cat naps; Callie will probably welcome each time you
waken her for some affection. This will help her shift some of her
sleeping to the night when you want to sleep.
When teaching
children to sleep through the night (not a goal I think is good for
infants, but very common) we put the child in his own crib in his own
room. Callie cannot be confined to a crib, but she can be put in a
room by herself. Or, you can just shut her out of your bedroom. I
personally prefer to put the cat(s) in a separate room, because I
don't like waking in the morning to messes in the living room,
dining room, kitchen, and pantry. Kitties love to explore, and when
they have the opportunity, they will climb the bookcase, the curtains,
the pantry shelves, the mantel, etc. Kitties also like to race along
the furniture, which doesn't seem to make the sofa fabric last longer.
They like to swat at little things about the size to pretend is a
mouse; I'm sure you have things in your home the right size for the
game, but which you don't want to be used as cat toys. Giving Callie
her own cat-proofed "bed"room will allow you to sleep much
better. Be sure to provide a litter box, dishes of food and water, and
some safe cat toys.
The paragraph
just above has ideas that work even if you don't have anywhere for a
cat room. Cats do wake at night, and they get hungry, so it is
important to provide food the cat can eat without waking you. We can
force infants to sleep all night without night feedings, and it does
not cause them physical harm (I believe it causes emotional harm), but
we cannot do this to cats. Callie needs to eat whenever she is hungry,
any time day or night, or she can get malnourished and possibly very
ill. Domestic cats are not like their wild cousins in this respect;
they cannot go days without eating, or even hours. When a domestic
cat's blood sugar drops, her blood chemistry changes in a way that is
not healthy. If this is prolonged, it will cause damage much like that
a diabetic or hypoglycemic person gets from imbalanced blood sugar. If
Callie has food she can get without waking you, she will gradually
stop waking you and just go eat as often as she gets hungry. A
continuously available water supply is also a necessity for cats.
Chances are,
Callie's waking you in the night is not so much about food or water as
about wanting your attention. So, here we are right back to the first
tip. Spending time with Callie, petting her, playing with her,
cuddling her, and encouraging her to engage in physical activity
during the day time will help her not to need your attention when you
need your sleep.
I mentioned
putting our cat(s) in separate rooms during human sleep time. Our cats
do paw at the door wanting to be let out. We have learned to live with
this. It is not as much a problem if we provide a suitable place for
claw-sharpening. Cats need to sharpen their claws, and they know
instinctively that they need to do this; they will do it even if
they have been declawed. (Please don't have your cats declawed!) We
have tried a lot of different ways, both homemade and store-bought, to
get cats to do claw-sharpening in the appropriate places. We have come
to prefer the SmartyCat brand SuperScratcher, with a regular
re-application of catnip. (We buy ours at Walmart, but I'm sure other
departments stores will have it.)
Once you have
a good scratcher your cat will use, the next step is to teach him or
her to use that instead of the new sofa or the almost-antique
wing-back chair inherited from Great Aunt Mamie. We keep the
SuperScratcher appealing by putting a fresh sprinkling of catnip
on it whenever it seems to be less attractive to cats. Dry catnip
works well for us. We also find it helpful to take the cat who is
clawing in the wrong place to the SuperScratcher and demonstrate with
our fingernails. Once we are sure pussycat knows where we want him or
her to scratch, we also impose a minor consequence for (getting
caught!) using the wrong place. We hiss at a naughty kitty, which is
cat language for "I don't like that." We remove the feline
from the wrong place to the right place. If the cat doesn't take
the hint and goes back to the furniture, we raise the level of
discipline. We might spray with a squirt bottle or mister; once a
cat learns the use of the spray bottle, it can be enough just to
show it, or to shake it. We might the the cat firmly in arms, and
cover his or her face with a hand. That borrows from mother-cat
language for Your behavior is unacceptable. And, over and over again,
we remove the cat who is sharpening in the wrong place to the correct
place, and we give a fresh demonstration of the accepted
claw-sharpening technique. Cats are not as easily or as permanently
trained as children, but with patience and persistence they will learn
to be good MOST of the time.
By the
way, do yiour cat a favor and never leave tempting uncovered human
food on the table or counter for more than a few minutes.
You can teach Puss that you do not allow his or her Boots on the food
preapartion and serving surfaces, but a plate of crispy bacon,
uncovered and unattended for more than five minutes, is just more than
any otherwise well-mannered cat can resist. We were reminded of this
just the other day, with the theft of two slices. And where do you
suppose my Velvet was just a minute ago? She was up on the kitchen
table hoping to find another unguarded piece of bacon. I hissed at her
and she knew she'd been caught. Now she's eating her own kibble like
the tame cat she I know she is.
Rose B, mother
of three, in NC
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