If you have cats, you understand they spend most of the day sleeping only to become active and noisy at night, which can disturb your sleep and be quite a nuisance if you have an early day at work. If you are having problems and would like to calm your cat down at night so you can get better sleep, you’ve come to the right place. We are about to list several methods you can try to keep your cat quiet while you sleep. We’ll provide you with a short description of each one and an image where possible to help you be better informed.
The 13 Tips for Keeping Your Cat Calm at Night
1. Don’t Allow Your Cat in the Bedroom
If you are a cat owner who wants to get better next sleep, don’t allow your cat in the bedroom. While it feels silly to say that sentence out loud as a cat owner, cats are extremely habitual by nature. If you put the cat in a specific room at the end of each day, beginning as a kitten, the cat will not leave the area as an adult, and you will be able to sleep peacefully. Unfortunately, most of us allow and even encourage small kittens to sleep with us and invade our personal space in other ways that we might not appreciate when a full-grown cat does it. If the kitten plays in bed while you sleep, the adult will too.
2. Get Another Cat
In some cases, purchasing a second cat can be a great way to get more sleep. Your cat will wake you up if it’s feeling bored and want you to entertain it or feed it. A second air will make it much less likely that either cat will be bored. The downside to this option is that cats are often extremely territorial, especially males, and may not get along, which will end up costing you sleep if you continuously need to interfere with squabbles.
3. Increase Playtime
One of the best ways to get your cat to sleep more at night is to spend more time playing with it during the day. Cats love to hunt and play games, and most cats will take short naps if nothing is exciting. Spending a few extra minutes each day playing with your cat, especially during the few hours leading up to bedtime, can significantly reduce your night disturbances. Playing with your cats will also help you form strong bonds, and other family members can help share the responsibility and the fun.
4. Window Perches
If you live alone and spend a lot of time away from home, it can be challenging to help your cat get the activity it needs to sleep during the night. Perches placed in different windows around your home can be a great substitute. The wildlife outside your home is about as exciting as it gets for a house cat, and they will expend plenty of energy running back and forth to see the sights.
5. Bird Feeders
Keeping in line with the methods we’ve already looked at, bird feeders are a great way to bring action to your cat. Window bird feeders use suction cups to attach to your window. You can then fill them with birdseed, and the birds will flock to your window, which will be a tremendous excitement for your cats, and it will expend plenty of energy as it makes its strange chattering sounds. Birds are also fun for us humans to watch.
6. Feed Your Cat Before Bed
If you are new to owning a cat, it won’t be long before you discover that cats frequently go to sleep right after eating. They have an extremely predictable routine of eating a large bowl of food and then wandering off to one of their favorite spots to groom themselves for a few minutes before taking a long nap. If you use this to your advantage and feed your cat right before you go to bed, you are practically guaranteeing yourself several hours of peaceful sleep.
7. Automatic Feeder
If feeding your cat before bed isn’t an option, you can also try an automatic feeder that will feed your pet later at night without disturbing your sleep. These devices are extremely helpful, inexpensive, and fairly reliable. The cat will be satisfied without disturbing you, and what is even better is the cat will associate the machine with food and not you, so when it is hungry, it will spend more time hovering around the machine instead of waking you up.
8. Create a Safe Place for Your Cat to Sleep
Unfortunately, we can’t see the world out of the cat’s eyes and don’t know what scares it or makes it uncomfortable. Garbage trucks, rattling pipes, and other noises can disturb your cat’s sleep. If it feels threatened, it might try to seek you out for shelter, disturbing your sleep. If you have a skittish cat, a cave-style pet bed is a great choice for helping your pet feel more secure while it sleeps and less likely to seek out your protection at night. We’ve also had great success throwing a blanket over an office chair to create a cave-style hut for the cat to hide out in.
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9. Warm the Bed
For animals with very dense fur, cats sure get cold quickly, and yours is much more likely to seek out your warm body heat at night during the colder winter months than at other times of the year. Luckily, when your cat is doing this, it’s not trying to make you get up and feed it or entertain it, so you can still get some sleep. However, either electric or self-warming, purchasing a warming bed can help you reduce sleep interruptions while providing a more comfortable environment for your cat.
10. Leave Out Toys
Many kittens and cats like to practice hunting when they first wake up, so leaving out some toys can help keep them busy, which might give you a few extra minutes of sleep. There are many plush toys your cat can casserole without making much noise, and some cats will carry on with them for quite a while.
11. Automatic Toys
As we mentioned earlier, toys can be a great way to keep your cat busy while you’re trying to sleep. While soft plush toys can help keep your cat’s quiet automatic toys will keep their cats engaged. We like the automatic laser toys, but there are several others as well. They do a fantastic job of keeping your cat occupied while you get some extra sleep. Unfortunately, most brands require you to start them manually, which means you need to get up for a minute, but if you are someone who falls back to sleep quickly, these toys can be a godsend.
12. Calming Pheromones
Several brands of calming pheromones are available that attempt to relax your cat, so it’s not running around and keeping you up at night. They can also help reduce the frequency of quarrels between territorial cats. Humans can’t smell the pheromones, and they’re non-toxic to cats, so it’s worth giving them a try if you have a hyperactive cat. It comes in a spray or a diffuser, but we prefer the diffuser because you can leave it plugged in for 30 days at a time.
13. Visit the Vet
If your cat is producing excessive vocalizations and you can’t seem to figure out what it wants, it may be trying to tell you that something’s wrong, and we recommend making an appointment with the van to have it looked over. Your characters suffer from any number of problems, from constipation to something more serious, so it’s important to get a proper diagnosis from your vet so you both can get a good night’s sleep.
- You may also be interested in: How to Calm Your Cat During Fireworks (12 Tips That Work)
Summary
In our experience, the most common reason the cats bother us while we are sleeping is that they’ve been doing it since they were kittens. It was cute at first, but now we have a busy day tomorrow, and it’s no longer funny. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to turn off, but some of the steps we presented on this list can be quite helpful. We found feeding the cat before bed or purchasing an automatic feeder to be the most helpful, along with increased playtime and a warm, comfortable bed or tent where they can hide. While it’s still a kitten, ensuring plenty of toys are around and even investing in some automatic toys can help keep your cat entertained while you sleep.
We hope you have enjoyed reading over this list and found a few ideas you want to try out. If we have helped you get a better night’s sleep, please share our look into how to calm your cat down at night on Facebook and Twitter.
- Related read: How To Calm Your Cat While On A Plane (7 Tips That Work)
Featured Image Credit: Piqsels
