Help My Kitten Is Deprieving Me Of Sleep

[mina'smomma]

Hey everyone,

Can anyone help me here? Mina keeps me up all night because she wants to play while I'm sleeping. (Have bite marks to prove it.) She is due for her shots next month, and I don't know if any of them is going to calm her down. She races around the apartment all the time, and this weekend she was running into the bedroom and smacked right into the wall and knocked herself out for a few seconds. (vet says she is ok)

Is there anything I can do to calm her down before I go to bed. I'm so afraid the poor thing is going to break her neck.

[catnapper]

Maybe a good solid hour of playtime before bed... take out the feather toys and roll around some balls for her to chase. She sounds like she has plenty of kitten energy!

Or what about caging her at night or putting her in a spare room for the night until she "learns" to be quieter and sleep through the night? My foster kittens are caged at night, and I don't feel guilty about it because I know they are safe, won't accidentally get stepped on or fall into something, have soemthign fall on them, etc. I know someone else on here also put their nocturnal kitten in a spare room for the same reason you have... too much activity at night keeping them from sleep.

[Tubby & Peanut's Mom]

All great advice from Catnapper. Or....you might just try closing your bedroom door. She might cry for awhile, but she will eventually get the hint and go occupy herself elsewhere. I know of two previous PT kitties who had to spend everynight of at least their first year locked in the bathroom because they were just too naw-tee at night.

I actually prefer the play with them until their pooped theory myself, but kittens will be kittens and if need be, the bathroom is an alternative.

[Jods]

Pixie was like this the first few weeks I had her I was going insane... lol... I was up in the middle of the night 10x a night trying to get her to stop biting scraching and running around like a maniac. What I did was whenever she came up to play I put her off the bed and just kept doing it over and over till she got the hint... Now she sleeps at night with me and knows I'll play when my alarm clock goes off... I'm not allowed to hit snooze though lol.. as soon as she hears it she wakes up and starts meowing at me over my head...

[nibblets]

Julie still has nights that she gets into mischief. Why just this last week she managed to knock the cable box off the top of my bedroom TV at around 3am. For the most part she will play with me in the evening and sleep pretty well during the night, but she is a nocturnal creature and she loves to venture through the dark house in search of......who knows what? She likes to do 'fly bys' in the wee wee hours of the morning. She makes her little Jetson flying sound and runs across the bed about 10 times...then she will settle in for awhile. I think it is just the nature of the beast to be active at night. As long as she isn't knocking stuff off the dresser or tables I can usually sleep through it.