Indoor-Only Cats

 Myolive13.  I'm glad you found us.  I hope you will make yourself at home here.   Olive sounds like a beautiful and healthy girl. 

It's unfortunate that she is keeping you awake at night.  Kittens do tend to be more active.  There are a couple of things you can do to get her to sleep during the night. 

One thing that helps is to give your kitty a snack before going to bed.  The other thing which is a great behaviour modification tool is Interactive Play.  If it's possible a few 15 minute sessions of interactive play per day.  Slow things down towards the end of the session, especially the one just before bed, followed by some food or treats.  Here is a link that explains how to do interactive play. 

http://home.ivillage.com/pets/cats/0,,mj31,00.html

It may take a few night sessions before Olive will sleep, as behaviour changes don't happen over night. 

Good luck and let us know how things go. 

All the best,

         

 

 

 

 

Congrats on the new kitten!!

I had a similar problem with my kitties and I started doing the interactive play with them before bedtime and now they are pretty much on my sleep schedule. Good luck!!!

thanks for the advice! We did interactive play last night and she slept until 3 a.m! A first! She seemed to really enjoy the play time too. I plan doing interactive play a couple of times a day.

I appreciate all the help! One more question, how much did you guys feed your kittens daily? I don't want to overfeed her but I know she's super active. She's about 4 lbs, and is 6 months old.

Thanks again!

I used to feed my kitties dry food and when we adopted Chloe, I would go by the guidelines on the bag. I soon switched them to wet food (since Maya was getting extremely plump). I think it's suggested that (in terms of wet food) you offer food twice a day and give them as much as they eat in 10-15 minutes. My adult cats get about 2/3 of a can each, twice a day. So for 3 of them, it's 4 large cans a day. (Picasso only eats chunked food so I feed her separately).

Oh, and I forgot to mention before that I got the cats "quiet toys" for night time play. They have scratching posts and those plush balls and mice to play with while I'm sleeping. I'll put up anything with bells or that makes too much noise.