h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some nights my three cats seem to deem it neccessary to run from one end of the house to the other at full speed, leaving a trail of upended, and often broken, items in their wake. Their antics can be quite amusing sometimes, but not so at 2 o'clock in the morning. I was wondering if any one has any nice suggestions as to why cats do this and if anything (also nice) can be done to discourage this.

This may not be the same reason your cats run amok but I once saw two young cats who were sleeping/dozing happily, suddenly sit bolt upright and stared a spot on the wall, both cats then ran straight at said wall and after they had got up after the collision proceeded to chase something that was invisible to me around the room. It scared the willies out of me.

Do not give your cats morphine. I've heard that cat's have the absolute opposite reaction to the drug that humans have -- the sedative actually makes them hyper!

I know many cat owners that report good results with a water gun or squirt bottle. The cats learn to listen for the movement of you getting out of bed but if you can stand getting up a few nights to hunt them down it could be quite effective.

Q

My three are usually quite dormant through the night, so I'm having to speculate a bit:

One possibility is that they're needing some outside-time and a cat-flap may be in order (I can't do that here because local raccoons are quite fond of the catfood).

Another possibility is that they're a bit territorial and are sleeping too close together.

A solution my parents had when I was a child (and had a different set of cats) is to find a big room with lots of warm places for them and shut them in until morning....or whenever you get up. They'll soon get the message, and any stampeding they do will be quite brief.

Fruitbat

Mt cat used to do that too ! She grew out of it, but not before the destruction of several vases, plates and ornements.

I don't have this exact problem but sometimes the cats won't come in at night. and we have to lock em out and hope they enter the laundry room through the doggy door. But one of ours just climbs up the house late at night, jumps onto balcony and meows until someone wakes up. But if you get up every night with squirt gun to get the cats then they may just try to sleep in your room, and then sucks. Maybe you could stay home for 2 days and stop'em from sleeping during the day, (joking) that way they would be super tired.

Have you tried tying a peice of butterd toast to their backs?

Its a bit hard for them to run around if their feet aren't touching the ground.

Easy! just take 3 pairs of handcuffs per cat chain the front feet together with one pair and back feet together with another. Then, use the third pair to chain both pairs together

That last reply is ineffective. Don't try it. You'll spend a lot of time and money trying to find the right cuffs for the job. There is something you must know about cats first. Cats have an extra perception that most humans lack. For example, they can see ghosts, or the un-dead. At night, these (sometimes) poltergeists like to torment cats. Why? I don't know. Something to do I guess! Now, to solve this problem: Find a way to get rid of the ghosts and the cats will sleep like logs. Getting rid of the ghosts is not something I can help you with, however. If this is not something easy for you to do, then just let your cats out of the house!