Even though it’s like an alarm clock and I don’t have to worry about whether I set it or not, sometimes I’d like to have those extra moments of snuggling in my bed in the morning… but nooo.
My cats disagree! They want their food (or cuddles) at the same time every morning!
The problem is that their chosen time is often way too early for me, but I can’t go back to bed because I lose the feeling after all the cat food and morning rush, you know what I mean? But after all, cats have their reasons.
1. It’s Breakfast Time
Usually, cats will wake you up when it’s time for their breakfast. My cat Mikey wakes me up every morning at six o’clock sharp! (Which is actually good, because sometimes I would be late to work…)
If you feed your cat when you first wake up, your cat will easily catch on to that habit and expect their breakfast every morning at the same time. It’s kind of a routine…
2. Routine Is A Strong Habit
It is a strong habit indeed. We all have our own little routines, and so do our cats. Our cats quickly learn and adjust to our routines and everyday habits, one of them being the time we wake up.
Perhaps you wake up every morning to go to work – your cat will learn all about that and it will expect its own needs to be fulfilled before you set off!
3. What About Weekends? Well…
Well, some cats will learn about weekends too, but this only happens very rarely. Most cats see routine as an everyday thing, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, lol.
Mikey, again, has no sense of the weekend or any free day whatsoever, and I am bound to wake up at 6 am every day. However, some cats learn your patterns and are able to detect when the weekend comes.
Perhaps you’ll be lucky and your cat will sense when it’s a day you can sleep late so it might come snuggle beside you for a few more hours and adapt to the new sleeping schedule.
4. Cats Are Crepuscular
Another interesting thing that might explain why your cat wakes you up at the same time every day is the fact that cats are crepuscular beings.
Cre-what? Yep, it sounds a bit scary when you first hear it, but it just means that your cat is most active at dusk and dawn. Not all cats, of course, but most.
Most cats love to play, wander and explore, or just basically roam around your house during the night when there’s no one who’ll interrupt them.
Then they get bored or hungry, and while they’re highly energetic and active, usually at dawn, they’ll wake you up! How lovely…
5. Your Cat Can Simply Feel You Waking Up
This explanation is my favorite one, but only on rare occasions do I get to experience it. Sometimes I get back to bed after feeding Mikey at dawn, and on those beautiful, rare occasions, I fall asleep again.
Then my other cats have the chance of snuggling and sleeping in with me. Then it happens…
Cats feel us waking up; they can sense the changes that we experience during sleep. As we go through the stages of sleep, our heartbeat, respiration, and activity during sleep change.
When cats are beside us, they can feel when we hit a lighter stage of sleep and then they’ll try to wake us up. They can sense we are responsive and expect we will wake up and be at their service.
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