Zilli has this habit of, shortly after we go to bed, going into the bathroom where the kitty litter is and scraping around in there for quite a while, and then frequently coming out and running around the house meowing his fool head off as loudly as he can. Doesn’t seem to matter what time we go to bed. If we go to bed at the same time he does it after we’re both in bed; if we go to bed separately he does it after the second person has gone to bed.
I think I figured out why.
Most nights, we throw the animals out of the second bedroom/computer room on our way to bed. (Some nights we don’t because they’re not there, but that’s fairly unusual.) In order to do this, we usually have to wake the cats up.
So what’s happening is Zilli is being awakened abruptly in the middle of the night. He staggers around for a couple of minutes trying to wake up, then realizes he’s got to go to the bathroom. By this time we’re in bed, so we get to listen to him scrape around in the kitty litter. Thus relieved, he’s all awake and cheerful, and goes forth to see what’s going on. Only it’s the middle of the night and the humans have gone to bed, so there’s *nothing* going on, and so he runs around the entire house saying, “HEY! Where ARE you guys? HEY! I’m AWAKE! HEY! Let’s PLAY! HEY! Listen up! HEY! Come out and play! HEY!”
I am *convinced* that’s what’s going on. :)
Our cats are also inclined to r-r-r-r-rampage in the evening, especially Libby. They go tearing around with their tails inflated making extraordinary growling noises and sounding like a million cats in army boots. However, contrary to your fine theory, we don’t pitch our cats out of anywhere (although they do generally switch rooms when we do). Also, they will still rampage if only one of us has gone to bed. On the other hand, I do agree with you in part: I think it has something to do with “Hey! Nocturnal here! Bored! PLAY!”
Yep, sounds plausible.
Our tom Kosh has a habit of waiting till the house has gone quiet and all the lights are out, and then he’ll suddenly notice that he’s been deserted. So he’ll then wake up and try to use his cat sonar to find us.
Cat sonar involves making a loud miaow. If we respond, he moves towards us and repeats, eventually finding us. If we don’t respond, he repeats the initial miaow until we do respond, even if this involves us being woken up. You’d have thought that, after all these years, he’d have realised we’d be in the bedroom at night, but never mind.
About 2:00 this morning, he tried a new one on us – yowling to be let in the front door. Why he didn’t go round the back and in the catflap is something I have yet to work out.
My act Aengus used to do that. I called it ‘kitty crack hour’, when their pupils are HUGE and they can’t sit still to save their life.
Aengus never went to run around the house. He’d much rather attack your feet than run up and down the hall.
sounding like a million cats in army boots.
I have this theory. OK, maybe only a hypothesis, since nothing is falsifiable when cats are around.
It’s called the Feline Conservation of Weight Principle, and it goes like this:
Cats are averagely proportioned small animals, with a weight according to the physical principles of size, density and local gravitational field. However, they are exceptional hunters, extremely light on their feet when stalking, and so on.
It is obvious to an observer that a cat weighs less when stalking. We know this is not due to the gravitational field changing, since the prey don’t suddenly also develop strange lightness, so it must be that the cat now has less mass. This is obviously contrary to the normal laws of physics, particularly the law of conservation of mass. Except that the conservation laws are actually slightly bendable – for instance, a subatomic particle may come into existence from nowhere for a suitably brief period – and this is one of the cases. So long as the average weight of the cat is constant over the longer period, it can vary up and down. When stalking, some of its weight is ‘postponed’ to the future.
The ‘cats in army boots’ phenomenon is merely the time that the extra weight comes into effect to rebalance the average.
…this is so terribly obvious now that you’ve explained it I cannot understand how I’ve gone my entire life without having deduced it on my own.
*laugh*
We first formulated the rough idea about a decade ago, when our Abby kittens apparently morphed into elephants at night. I’d never actually worked it through before, let alone written it down.
I was going to go with, “WOO! PARENTS ARE GONE! WOO! Let’s PAAARRRR-TAY!!”
But yours is good too.
Makes sense. The culprit at our house is the older cat. She’s at least 15 now. Probably wakes up on the chair downstairs and thinks the same thing.
Darn that night vision. No wonder they think it’s the same time all the time.
A friend has now pointed out:
Keetahn does this too. The yowling bit right after we’ve gone to bed anyway. Yes, he’s usually been woken up because we, well, move in order to go to the bedroom.
The litterbox thing though. He’s got this very strange habit of going to the bathroom and then RACING around the house meowing proudly. Den’s convinced he’s just so HAPPY to be relieved of his business (and feels much lighter) so he has to share with the world.
My cat also meows pitiously after every usage of the litter box. In her case, though, it’s clearly, “MOM! Mom, my litter box is STINKY! It OFFENDS me! FIX IT! NOW!” since she sits in the doorway to her room, kitty nose pointed into the air, and kitty body language proclaiming that she is ignoring and disdaining anything that might be behind her.
For all of the strange things my cats do do…I am so glad that this isn’t one of them.
Even if I have to wake my two up, once they get back to my bedroom (where I lock them in to sleep at night), they simply crash out again until it’s time to get up (and get fed!) in the morning. Hell. They won’t even wake up if I do in the middle of the night.
In the summer, we keep the bedroom door closed (keeps the cold air in it). Hana seems to think this means we are inside the bedroom, even if we’re not. She’ll leave my office where I’ve just been petting her, amble up the hallway, see the closed door and start with her ‘I’m all alone, come out!’ meow. If I poke my head out and call to her she does this double take, but will scamper back to me.
Then she’s quiet until the next time she’s alone in the hallway and notices the bedroom door is closed.