My Cat Won’t Let Me Sleep!

[Music] please release me let me go what's up mojo tears it is your cat daddy jackson galaxy and what does my terrible rendition of that song have to do with today's question let me just get to it this is a question that gets asked to me literally all the time i know i say that all the time but this one i'm talking like every 10 hours like i get somebody on facebook or instagram or you know yelling at me from across the street like hey jackson my cat doesn't let me sleep i'm not getting any sleep jackson it's like having an infant i'm going nuts jackson all the time luckily we get to answer that question today so our question comes from a lovely person named anael hope i'm pronouncing that right and al and her cat's name is chyna with a y china so let's take a look at what nl has to say [Music] hey jackson it's a little bit later in the day now it's 8 38 in the morning so i have a cat she is one year and eight months old her name's chyna for some reason always around six in the morning sometimes five on crazy days four in the morning um she uh just starts meowing and whining and she just wants everybody in the house to get up and just start their day at six in the morning with her i've tried many things i've tried ignoring her i have to say at first i would just immediately get up when she did that he just walks around the house meowing until somebody gets up and shows her the attention she wants and i know it's kind of bad because i don't know if it's bad but i don't know if i might be reinforcing bad behavior and i would really wouldn't want to do that yeah and then i've also had um this advice that i should just lock her out of the room and she'll understand eventually yeah she'll make a lot of noise but eventually she'll understand and she'll say you know what well nobody's giving me the attention i want i guess i'll just stop what do i do in those cases how do i get her to let me sleep at least till late in the morning and not wake me up at six in the morning thank you very much all right and okay i see now nl's not just joking around with us she's like no i'm gonna show you what this looks like when i get woken up my favorite part can i just say is this right here that's our life with cats waking up in the morning with what i call a back-ended compliment oh jackson before i say any solutions or anything just speaking straight to unl so just imagine that you had a 16 year old or 15 year old in your house and your 15 year old's like i got my learner's permit can i borrow the car no you can't please can i borrow the card no you can't please please please please no you can and then they sneak off and steal the car that's what you got right about now and that's chyna in a nutshell so the good news is she will begin to grow out of this her energy is shooting all over the place right now she just wants to push buttons and see what she can get away with and and really after she is after her first year or 18 months so yeah you might have another year of this but hey you know knock wood long life for china and it will subside on its own to a certain degree with that said let's get into what you can actually do to get some sleep one thing that's important on al that you actually referenced was that you ignore the cat or you try to ignore chyna i've tried many things i've tried ignoring her i have to say at first i would just immediately get up when she did that if you just get tired of dealing with it and you either get up to feed your cat play with your cat and even if you throw a pillow and you're like chyna cut it out not to say that you did that i know i'm just saying i've done it hey there you have it there you have it or just yell at them or just say please just leave me alone that is a variation of not ignoring him rewarding behavior because she knows that if she does what she does you will respond so yeah now and everybody out there one of the hardest parts of solving this issue is just seriously ignoring like i do not hear you i'm pretending to be asleep right now and i'm just gonna do this until you stop doing what you do i know that's hard and and if you feel like you just can't you just can't do this course of action at least reward the silence at least wait until china just stops and settles in then you can be like let's go have some food you know even if it's too early for you but you're already awake just reward the silence and not the tantrum or the different versions of the tantrum now this part is a little more complicated and a little more regimented and you're going to hate me for taking you through it and everything as you might for all of this but you're going to hate me less then you're probably sick of china every morning you know putting your butt in your face at 6 30 in the morning there's this thing that i call the three r's the three r's routine ritual rhythm this is how it works you start doing something every day that's a routine you're getting into a routine after about three weeks of doing that or so that turns into a ritual meaning that it's invested with something you now have a rhythm a rhythm to both of your lives a circadian rhythm now naturally cats are crepuscular beings which is to say that they are the most active at sunup and sundown because naturally outside that's where their prey is awake right the the mice and the rats and everybody else up with the sun down with the sun okay so that's her natural rhythm but and that's her natural rhythm as you can tell by the sun peeking in through your shades and they all as you try to sleep and she's like well cock-a-doodle-do let's go oh like if i was on a desert island i would i would never be at a loss i'd always have someone to entertain myself me wilson anyway uh where the hell was i so what's important right now is to get chyna into her three r's so what's the best way to do that number one is to feed meals every day not free feed her okay so you want her to expect food at a certain time her body then regulates around when that feeding time is the second thing that you do is play time and play time should come around meal time and my favorite thing to do is your last meal of the day for your cat should be about an hour hour and a half before you go to bed that way you have her play energy just all freaking out then a meal now she's gonna go down hunt catch kill eat groom sleep rinse repeat that is the three r's right there so if you get her going a little bonkers at night right before you go to bed and you're feeding her now you're getting her to the place where she's going to want to sleep when you sleep and if you do it late enough at night you can buy yourself another hour at first and hey 7 30 is better than 6 30 any day of the week so anyhow i think that you bring up something that a lot of other people are dealing with so good on you well not so good on your housemates or your family or whoever you're talking about but clearly china is making the rounds and seeing like okay who's going to give me what i need here who's going to give me what i need here oh dad just gave me what i need here now i'm eating and i'm up right so having family or roommate or whatever buy-in is really important because you could ignore chyna as much as you want to you can get her into her rhythm as much as you want to but until everybody has the exact same reaction to what she's doing it's never going to stop so that's the way you sell it to everybody like if you want this to stop this is the only way to do it if they buy in you're going to see a difference really quickly and that leads me to another point and the point is that it really doesn't take that long in the big scheme of things in the big scheme of her life getting her rhythm to adjust to your rhythm is not a long-term thing the way i usually equate it to is jet lag let's say yesterday you were in paris and today you're in los angeles you're gonna wake up at three o'clock in the morning going lunchtime and what are you gonna do eat lunch no you're gonna just force yourself back to sleep and within about at max about a week you're going to be back in the la rhythm of things same thing with china about after a week of really committing to your three r's you're going to see a difference i am telling you when when i do at home consultations i tell my clients who ask this exact same question i promise you this is going to work i don't make guarantees but i can come really close to making a guarantee that you'll make a difference in her life and yours if you really commit to it and if you don't i usually give them ten days i say if you really promise me that you're committing a hundred percent to this after ten days she wakes you up at four o'clock in the morning here's my phone number call me at four o'clock in the morning no one's ever called me at four o'clock in the morning but that's because it works and i'll say this again reward the silence right now it's part of her rhythm and part of her cue system to know that once you do a certain amount of moving and once you say her name and whatever or any of your family members does the same then it's go time now she's going to get food the day's going to start so it's important that you establish your daily rituals i get up i brush my teeth i go downstairs i make coffee and then china you get your breakfast and shim's probably gonna stand by your feet meowing the entire time commit to your rituals so that she falls in line with those the the thing that i'm trying to get you guys to do and this is really just important in your whole life is to try to line up your cat's body rhythm with yours with your families so that energetic spikes happen to the best of your ability at the same time and then energetic dips happen at the same time as well now cats don't live their lives naturally the way we do they don't have the same rhythm as we do but the give and take here is they live with us they're in our homes now and we have to try to coax them into our rhythm to the best of our ability listen whether it works 100 or it works 80 i still think you're going to be happy because 7 30 in the morning is a whole heck of a lot better than 4 30 5 30. ah that's the worst and one last note for you now i really don't think that locking her out of your bedroom is a good thing i i never think that that's a good thing i really do think that being included in the most socially significant areas of the home is so important to your cat's mojo to their territorial confidence in terms of where we spend the most time and where our scent is the strongest in the house so they complement our scent and they feel more secure our couch basically and our bed so our bedroom is just full of our scent and they want to be in there so please don't listen to all the knuckleheads we're telling you just to shut her out of your life it's going to you know you step on one side of the toothpaste it comes out the other you know what i that sort of makes sense when you think about it that sort of makes sense look one way or another you're either going to make her less secure and she's going to act out for that reason or you're going to make her more secure and don't forget you live with a bunch of people so you want everybody to shut their bedroom doors everybody that's just going to make china really insecure at her age and more crazily energetic when the time comes that everybody's around so you know pick your cat poison nope so anal thank you so much for uh sending me not just that question but that wonderful footage because that footage itself is how i'm able to help you and that goes for you guys as well keep sending in those questions don't forget to do exactly what anneal did which is you speak the problem to me then you show me what you're dealing with because honestly not only does that help me a lot but it's awfully entertaining let's see that one shot again can't get enough of that all right you guys until next time don't forget hit the bells do the things subscribe do all that stuff because you don't want to miss the next time uh someone gets walked over while they're sleeping i mean that's kind of fun vicariously right okay until next time you guys all light and all love and all mojo to you meow

Channel: Jackson Galaxy

Views: 244,077

Keywords: jackson galaxy, cats, cat daddy, my cat from hell, cat whisperer, cat guy, cat guy animal planet, cat expert, cat advice, cat health, cat behavior, cat issues, cat care, cat training, cat psychology, animal planet, jackson galaxy videos

Id: myTrcaeUyzo

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020