Hello,

Dunno if anyone has any unique advice to offer other than what's currently out there, but my cat goes berserk between the hours of 3-5am.

I am at work all day and she is [99%] an indoor cat but I make sure I play with her and give her loads of fuss and attention and generally keep her awake from when I come home from work (5pm) until bedtime (1am-ish). I tire her out with various toys on strings and the good ol' laser pen until she gives up in a heap but she'll still be up at 3.

Even at the weekends when I can keep her up during the day she'll still go mental.

It's not a food thing because you can feed her and then 15 minutes later she'll be bombing it around again.

I generally wouldn't care but I'm concerned about bothering the people below with her tumbling all over the shop and creating a racket (for the record, the soundproofing where I am is pretty decent and the floors feel as solid as concrete and it's all carpeted).

She's 1 and half and pretty much always been a pain in the morning but I think it's time that behaviour was curbed.

Yeah, good luck with that. It's a cat thing. Even when l lived where it was safe to let them outdoors they'd still have mad moments in the small hours. I've never had one that didn't do it, although it does tend to calm down in my experience as they get older.

But not necessarily stop...

My cat bombs around like a maniac just before she does a poo! Don't know if that's specific to her or not, though.

My girl ( 15 months old ) is the same at the moment. Shes allowed out but shes a bit of a fair weather cat so with all the rain and wind we've had recently she's spent a lot of time indoors and, as you say, at 2/3 o'clock in the morning she's ready for a game. Im quite firm with her and I give her a short while to play and then with an increasingly stern voice I tell her its enough and, if necessary, physically move her away from whatever she is trying to destroy. Normally she gives in and settles down, sometimes she'll go downstairs in a sulk and once or twice I've actually made her go out in the garden for an hour. So I've no real remedy and its unfortunate that you don't have the option of putting her out but I try to keep to a routine and never give in to her and its working reasonable well atm.

PS Sometimes I have the opposite problem. This morning I had to push her off me so I could get up at 9.30 and she'd been in bed since 10.00 last night!

Probably just chasing mice.

Shes on heat...wants a nice male cat to sort her out.

One of mine does that after her poo

Yeah, she does get to go out every now and then but it's supervised and planned in advance.

Interestingly, I kept her awake until about half 2ish last night and she got the crazies at around 6 this morning. It's like she won't sleep for more than 4 hours at night.

I guess as long as I'm not getting angry letters or people knocking on my door I'll can put up with it for the time being.

Upstairs neighbours' cat did that.... i complained and they ha to get rid of it... problem sorted.

Can you not contain her one room or something, not fair that your pet is bothering other people really

She it isn't bothering other people. Well, she might be but they haven't said anything. It's Schrödinger's cat at the minute.

If someone does say something I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Like I said earlier though, I'm 99% sure the soundproofing is adequate. You can't hear anyone's washing machine or anything like that, which are infinitely louder than a cat running up and down a hall.

I also think that the people below me are quite young and probably give less of a shit. The only noise I have ever heard in this block was about 3 months ago when they had a party.

I'll consider confining her if it starts getting silly. In the meantime, I just need to find the right routine to make sure she's not doing it at silly o'clock and try to time it with when people go to work etc

All young cats, especially confined ones have a mad hour at some point during the day in my experience. They are playing.

It settles down and goes away as they get older.

I went to bed quite late last night (about 3ish) and she got up with me at around half 7 and was fine.

I think she's waking up at 3/4am when I'm fast asleep, gets really bored and starts entertaining herself by running around.

UPDATE! Either it's because it's getting colder or because I've started feeding her later, but she's calmed down this past two weeks or so. She still has the odd mad dash but it's usually at around 6am which is much more tolerable.

Thats good, wampa.

The first summer I got my cat she would get up at the crack of dawn, go out for a bit and on return sit outside my bedroom door (open) and yell for me to come to her. Luckily she's grown out of this! She's never been one for the 'mad half hour' though - probably does her running about in the garden.

I most certainly would not get rid of my cat just because you complained. You complain about people letting them outside then complain because they are locked in and need to burn off some energy. Make your mind up!

Our cat Charlie does that. He'll be muzzing in front of the fire and suddenly he's a whirlinf dervish and hurtles up the stairs. He then pelts up and down the landing before landing in his litter tray in the bathroom. Mind you, he's completely off his trolley in the first place.

Nor me. I'd have told the complainer to take a running jump. Cats are rarely noisy enough to bother anyone else when in the house/flat. Too light on their feet.

Every cat I've known has their mad half hour of racing around the house. They spook themselves and gallop around and then the adrenaline dissipates and they remember they're above that silliness It's part of why we love them. They only do it when they're young.

It is artificial for cats to be alone and to be indoors. Their behaviours are tailored for an outdoor existence (with places of shelter) containing other cats and prey. Feeding the cat produces stored chemical energy that is released through innate behaviours triggered by external stimuli. If those external stimuli are not available then you will get spontaneous triggered behaviours. There will be a diurnal cycle to these behavioural patterns. In natural environments cats are more active at night than during the day.

One of my cats is very lazy so it is amusing to see her have her mad half an hour where she runs up and down the length of the living room, eyes huge like saucers and chases her tail. Then afterwards she will sit down and wash herself like nothing ever happened.
She does this about once a week.

My cat, who must have seen something exciting going on in the garden, would come charging up the stairs at silly o'clock, meow loudly and went running back down stairs, expecting you to follow her.

Well the house was'nt on fire, burglars had not broken in, so there was no following down the stairs.

10 mins later, thump, thump up the stairs (the more annoyed she became, the heavier the footfall) rinse and repeat. This would go on for at least an hour until, l would grab her, put her on the bed and she would go to sleep. Well until she decided it was breakfast time about 6 when she would start all over again.

She was a very light Cat, l could never work out how it sounded like she was wearing hob nail boots when she went up and down the stairs. Bless her.

I still get mad half hours from my two - aged 7. Sometimes it's down to whatever goes on in their little heads, but very often they do it if there's an approaching storm or especially snow coming in.

I know how you feel - my cat has her funny five minutes, thundering around like the clappers. Turned out she needed a poop and was attempting to 'work it loose', as it were. Although she doesn't go cuckoo at 3am, she does wake me up for food, sitting in the lounge and meowing.

Mine who is 16 still goes bananas at times, although fortunately it's not now at 'silly o'clock'...as he likes his sleep more these days.

Don't you just love them.....with all their silly little quirks

Oh, I do... I do...!