“Help! My Cat Won’t Stop Meowing at Night!”
Have you scoured the internet to find a solution on how to get a cat to stop meowing but still found no helpful answer? You’ve come to the right place!
There are several reasons why your feline buddy may be crying constantly. It disrupts your sleep schedule, but their meows provide information on their condition. They can help you avoid such situations in the future.
We have compiled an extensive list of tips and tricks that can solve your late-night problem on how to stop a cat from meowing at night!
Table of Contents
How to Get My Cat to Stop Meowing
Cats meow at night in order to get your attention and let you know what they are currently feeling. By following the next procedures, you’ll be able to avoid their meows constantly and even know why they do it:
1. Play before you go to sleep
The usual problem cat owners face is “When I go to bed, my cat crying at night is unavoidable”. This may be due to them seeking your attention or just being bored. Make it a habit to remind yourself to play with your cat before hitting the hay.
Cats are crepuscular by nature, which means that dusk and dawn show their peak activeness. If they do not get their energy used up by the day, it carries over to the evening, which leads to their attention-seeking meows.
Doing this activity 45 minutes and 15 minutes before sleeping can help entertain them, and continuous playing can wear them out.
Aside from lessening the chances of night meowing, leisure time creates a closer relationship between you and your feline pet despite being away from each other during the day.
2. Provide enough food and water
It is essential to establish feeding times for your feline friend since providing these necessities at random times can lead to sleep disruption. This is due to them being conditioned to the fact that they can ask for it at any time.
Even if they are pleading for food when they witness you eating alongside them, do not give it to them as it will be a part of their routine.
A recommended time to feed them would be later in the nighttime to ensure that they wouldn’t be hungry in the middle of the night. Keeping their water bowl full would also lessen the chances of them meowing.
3. Clean their litter box
Our furry friends prefer having a constantly clean litter box. So, it is recommended to scoop it out before going to bed to lessen the chances that they meow loudly at you.
The routine cat owners follow in cleaning a litter box is that it is thoroughly cleaned weekly, while simple scooping should be done twice a day to keep your cat happy.
4. Use nightlights around your home
As your cat gets older, they are prone to obtaining visual problems or even issues in mental functioning like dementia. They may need your guidance during the night to go about their journey around the house, so providing lights will be able to aid them instead of relying on you.
If this persists, a visit to the veterinarian can provide more medications to help relieve the pain aside from the recommended apparatus added to your home.
5. Bring your cat to a vet
Aside from the aforementioned diseases accompanied by aging, there may be other internal problems that a cat is facing like kidney and thyroid problems. Excessive howling at night is one of the symptoms, and their distressed behavior is something to look out for.
Make sure to check out other symptoms other than meowing to verify your speculations. If this may be troubling your cat, do not hesitate to put a collar on them and head out to your nearest veterinarian.
6. Ignore your cat
This may be a challenging task due to the cat meowing non stop being the cause of your sleep deprivation. But, this training is efficient in lessening and even eliminating the event of meowing every night.
If you constantly respond to their every whim, they will continue to ask for your attention, even if you are sleeping. A fellow cat owner has shared their insights into this phenomenon on Reddit. This behavior is called “extinction burst”, wherein cats will meow more and even louder if you stop ignoring them.
This behavior continues until you get their attention, and the cycle will repeat. Their meows may get more obnoxious as the days go by.
Also, let’s see some Reddit guys did to avoid cat meowing at night
Is it okay to let the older cat teach the younger cat not to yell meow at night?
byu/BankApprehensive2514 inCatAdvice
Other Things to Consider
Aside from the steps recommended earlier, different measures may be needed when catering to cats depending on their development stage, or their conditions.
1. A new kitten
A kitten meowing at night may still be getting used to its new home. They are known to be stressed due to their new environment. Attending to their needs and providing your attention can help soothe your kitten, and creating a more familiar environment will be able to address this concern.
2. Cats in mating season
Cats approaching their mating seasons are signified by their yowling and meowing and can be present during the night. These are said to be louder than those cats who are already spayed.
A male cat may yowl due to sensing a female cat in heat, while females tend to yowl louder due to this phenomenon. It is advisable to spay or neuter cats to prevent them from crying out loud with high intensity and frequency.
3. Cats after neutering procedure
A neutered male cat yowling may signify that they are currently undergoing painful and stressful sensations due to the medical procedure. The veterinarian can provide helpful medications to help ease his pain.
Conclusion
These constant meows are our feline friends’ way of communicating to us what they want and what they need. It might be important medical help, necessities like food and water, or just attention and affection from their owners.
By understanding what they are communicating to us, we continue to establish a good relationship with them in the long run. Now being knowledgeable on how to stop a cat from meowing at night, we hope that you were able to learn a lot from this article and apply it to tending to your cats.
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I am Amy Sawy, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) graduate from the University of Kansas. y husband, Dr. Plummer, and I own a veterinary clinic in Phillipsburg, Kansas. In addition to my professional background, I am a devoted pet owner myself, with a household that includes dogs, rodents, and most notably, cats – a total of five felines in my home.
In 2020, I joined an organization as a professional writer, leveraging my experience and collaborating with my team to deliver the most valuable information for your cat’s care.
