Hi everyone,
New to the forums and looking for some advice. It's kind of an odd problem...
We have a five-year-old tabby who seems to have some sort of feline version of ADD. Or...he just gets bored really easily, and we don't know what to do. We can be watching TV and he'll be in the room with us, and then will suddenly get up and go into the next room or down the hall and start meowing in a plaintive "I'm lost" or "I'm abandoned" or "I want attention" kind of way. When he does this we bring his attention back to us and then play with him for a bit (we have a plastic stick with feathers on the end that he likes) but he'll grow tired of that and stop playing. Sometimes he refuses to play at all. Not long after he's back to the meowing again.
It's especially bothersome once we've gone to bed. If we can't somehow exhaust him, he'll start meowing as soon as the lights go out. Or, he'll be quiet until about 3am and then start meowing again. It's never yowling, just "nobody loves me" meowing like I described above.
Another habit he has at night is to scratch/claw at the walls when he's bored/thinks he's alone. During the day he'll scratch/dig at the feather-stick toy if it's on the floor. Digging at the toy is actually a kind of obsessive thing for him. When he starts, we'll play with him, but then he gets bored. Then it's back to digging, so we end up having to take the stick away. We've tried putting the stick on the linoleum so he can dig at it to his heart's content, but he will actually pick it up in his mouth and put it back on the carpet! We have "soft claws" on him because he would tear up the furniture otherwise, but even so, he still catches on the carpet and frays it.
It's getting to be a real issue, especially with being woken up by him at night. We're not sure what else to do with him to keep him occupied during the day. We have another cat and they play together (and the other cat never behaves like this). We also have a "cat tree" and they get catnip every so often. Actually, sometimes we've had to resort to giving the tabby catnip before bed because it's the only way he'll be worn out enough to sleep all night, but I don't think it's a good way to deal with the problem. We both work full time so there's no one at home during the day, but the cats have the big bay window at the front of the house to look out of.
Any suggestions? I've owned a number of other cats before and I've never had one do this. My boyfriend tells me the tabby occasionally did the meowing thing before he moved in with me, but the cat never used to refuse to play, so this is obviously something that is getting worse over time.
Maybe the tabby needs a psychiatrist??
Anyway, any advice you could give would be great. Thanks!
Shai
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