During the day while I'm home my cat engages in normal cat behavior, a bit of cuddling, grooming, playing, eating, lots of napping. But as soon as the lights are off and I'm in bed, he spends large portions of the night running around emitting these loud guttural yowling noises. I have to get up multiple times a night, formerly with a spray bottle but now just hearing me coming makes him hide...and start again. This is fairly new behavior since moving into my new apartment in September. I can't sleep! Please help.
Has he been neutered? Male cats tend to yowl at night to get out and mate. Female cats tend to yowl when in season. I have 2 neutered male cats who have never yowled and sleep all night.
Oh, no! My cat did that too. I called it "having a kitty party" outside of my bedroom door. He would run around the living room and play, but it was so loud. Now he just tries to claw his way into my room. It's annoying and I can't sleep either.
When my cats were young, they did a lot of nighttime running around. I found it helped if I spent about 2-3 hours before bed keeping them awake and trying to get them to play. They'd be so exhausted when I was ready to go to bed that they would sleep, at least for a few hours. I felt a little bad about forcing them to stay up when they wanted to just cuddle and cat nap, but they slept really good once I did let them sleep. Now that they are old, they just nap all the time, so it isn't a problem anymore for us.
I have grown up with the sounds of feline orchestra in full session just about every night, so it doesn't bother me anymore. Sometimes I will even try to listen and try to figure out which cat was giving voice.
One of my cats does this whenever she's "hunting." Usually we'll find her in another room carrying a ball or (fake) mouse in her mouth. I find it amusing because she's a small cat and it's a surprising amount of noise
Sounds like she's making a big production out of it. Probably she knows she wouldn't be able to handle a real mouse if one does pop up right under her nose.
My boys did it when they were younger even though they were neutered. I just assumed they were playing or being normal tom cats. LOL They don't do it anymore.
I have a male cat that does that outside, and it drives me crazy. I try to make him leave the female cat alone, but you know how that goes. I just do not need anymore cats, we have 6 already.
All my cats are calmer during the day, but when the lights go out they tend to run like they're in a race most of the night. It can be caused by not being neutered as well. If they are just more active at night, it probably is because this is more normal for every day cats.
