See this guy? 
He’s going through a late-in-life crisis. We’ve been traveling the last few weekends. First, to Salt Lake City for Christmas, then to Zion for New Year’s and then again last weekend for Jamie’s grandpa’s funeral. Compound that with the fact I’ve been gone a lot lately–and it’s about to get worse–and this guy is needy, needy, needy. We try to give him as much attention as we can when we’re around but his anxieties are manifesting themselves early in the morning.
Apparently we’ve made a bad choice in feeding him kitty treats after we wake up because he’s become downright obsessed with them, so much so that he desperately needs them at 4 a.m. And 4:30 a.m. And sometimes at 5 a.m. I normally love having him sleep at my feet but these early mornings are killing Jamie and me, especially because he hasn’t been sleeping well anyway (sometimes he doesn’t fall asleep until 1 or 3 a.m.) So, we started locking Fat Kitty out of our room and while he’s happy to go to sleep with Bode, he has made it clear we are his No. 1 choice. The other morning, he stood outside of our door meowing. I tried to shush him away but he kept right on going. In a desperate attempt to get him to shut up and not wake everyone else, I got up but didn’t give into him by rewarding him with kitty treats until much later. If it works for kids, it works for cats, right?
Nope. Fat Dude has a food quota to reach every day and he doesn’t go down easily. So, last night we made a new plan: to let him “meow it out.” The problem with that is it wakes us up but unlike when we let our kids cry it out, we aren’t worried about something being actually wrong.
Last night was night one of Operation Meow It Out and we cranked our humidifier to high so we wouldn’t hear him. I had to go to the bathroom at one point in the night but told myself, “Don’t do it. HE’LL KNOW YOU’RE AWAKE AND WILL START MEOWING.” At 4 a.m., he came calling but I only heard him meow once…likely because I was in my own stupor from lack of sleep. I went on to feverishly dream about him but was wracking my brain about the word he used to express his displeasure.
When I woke up, I remembered that word loud and clear: “MEOW.”
Heaven help us all. We’re being held hostage by a fat cat.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 