CREATURE FEATURE

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette "sleep catnea" illustration.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette "sleep catnea" illustration.

My cat always sleeps with me. She doesn't bother me while I'm sleeping except that she wakes me up earlier than I want because she's hungry. She meows and paws at me until I give up and get out of bed and feed her. What can I do to make her stop this and wait until I'm ready to get up?

Many a cat owner has awakened to the velvet paw of the meowing alarm clock that has no snooze button. While you can take heart that you're not alone in the desire to choose your own time to wake, it's little comfort when facing an insistent kitty.

Knowing others commiserate with your early-morning "sleep catnea" -- a made-up name for a well-known syndrome in which a cat awakens its owner one or more times during the night -- also means that someone somewhere has to have found ways to overcome the problem. And they have. You've hit on the most typical tactic, which is to simply feed the cat. The real answer, however, lies in how and when the cat is fed.

In the August issue of Catnip, feline experts at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University address the issue of premature awakening, noting that it is critical to avoid reinforcing the cat's unwelcome behavior by responding to it. As long as the cat knows its behavior will get the desired result, the wake-up meows will continue.

Of course, staying in bed and ignoring the cat is easier resolved than done when you're being paw-slapped in the face by a hungry cat. Or is it? You can feed the kitty and stay in bed at the same time, according to the Catnip article. Try feeding the cat at night just before bedtime or even bring a dish of food into the bedroom so the cat doesn't have to go far to find food when she gets hungry.

Another option for responding to the cat's hunger pangs while slumbering is to buy a battery-operated food bowl that operates on a timer. Fill the bowl with the cat's favorite dry kibble and set the timer to open the bowl at the specific time of morning when the cat is most likely to bother you.

There are many automatic feeders the market with varying degrees of programmability, ranging in price from $32 to $170. The Lentek 6-Day Automatic Pet Dish ($40) can be set to dispense food at intervals of six, 12 and 24 hours. The more expensive CSF-3 Cat Super Feeder ($184) has a to-the-second digital timer and can be programmed to dispense precise servings several times a day.

In the midrange is the Mota Perfect Dinner Pet Feeder ($80) with an LCD display that can be programmed for time and portion size. You can even record a voice message for the cat, maybe something like, "Let me sleep, furball of mine, but go ahead and eat."

Sweet dreams.

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Pets in space: In October, a Houston-based company called Celestis Pets will send the first cremated remains of a pet dog into space. Seriously, pet ashes will go where no pet ashes have gone before, following the celestial path of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, whose ashes blasted off into space in 1997.

Cremains of an Australian shepherd named Apollo, which belonged to a family in California, will be the first pet ashes sent skyward, according to information from Celestis. The dog's ashes will be loaded into a capsule and onto a commercial space flight, fly into space and return to Earth. They'll then be given to the family along with a certificate proving the hound's star trek. Going to space comes with a price tag of about $1,000, according to Celestis. For about $4,000, a pet's ashes can be sent up in a satellite and orbit Earth for years. A pet owner wanting to shoot for the moon pays about $11,000. Space travel doesn't come cheap.

Family on 08/13/2014

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