A little scamp...

My cat LadyBug is a little scamp. Or my husband calls her another name that I shouldn't print here. The problem is she keeps me awake a good portion of the night. It all begins about 5 minutes after lights out - she comes up onto the bed with me and starts pawing at my face. Or, she will start knocking things off my bedside table, or she will go elsewhere in the room and make any kind of noise so that I will get up. Usually she finds some paper or something and paws and scratches at it incessantly. Believe me, it is very loud and unpleasant.

So what I do is I get up and go downstairs with her and feed her a small can of Fancy Feast. My other cat Cricket will usually come along to see what we're doing and have a little nosh too. Then LadyBug will eat only a small portion of the food, and then leave the rest. Also, I usually have to sit with her while she eats.

After I go back to bed, sometimes as little as 20 minutes later she is at it again: knocking things over, scratching my face, etc. So I go downstairs again with her. This time she will not eat what is sitting there. It has to be fresh. I try anything to make her happy so she will let me sleep. Tuna, treats, etc.

Recently, she doesn't even want to eat at all. I go down to feed her and she will just look at it and turn up her nose. Sometimes she won't even come with me into the kitchen; she will just watch from afar. And when I try to go get her, she will run and hide underneath the kitchen table.

I cannot figure out what her problem is. I have tried playing with her for awhile before bed (to tire her out), I have tried shutting her in a cage at night (but she rattles on it so I can't sleep through that either), I have tried shutting her out of our room (but she just scratches at the door and I can't sleep through that). I am now thinking of giving her some kind of sedative before bed. I don't want to; but I need to get sleep!

On top of that, my dog Treif usually needs to go potty at least once during the night. So when I do that, that will stir up LadyBug again and she will be all over me.

I realize that my getting up and dealing with her is just reinforcing her behavior. However, not dealing with her is worse to me. I don't like finding all my stuff on the floor in the morning, or finding papers with claw marks on them lying around. I can't sleep through the scratching sounds on the door or the rattling of the cage.

My husband says to shut her in the garage where we can't hear her, but it is not a heated garage. It is way too cold, and she is an old cat. That would be cruel.

So I continue with lack of sleep every day and try to make up for it on the weekends.