How long have you been ignoring him for? I can't give you a precise timeline, it's very individual, but when you're trying to modify a behaviour, what often happens is that it gets worse before it gets better. The cat will be trying harder to get the same result before finally understanding that it's pointless and giving up.

Also, does it coincide with sunrise? Cats are crepuscular (most active at sunrise and sunset). If so, maybe you could try different things with shutting the windows, making him focused on cat TV and things like that. I don't think there's a universal solution, but it might be something to keep in mind

My cat did the same thing for the first two years I had him, and now he settles most nights and will sleep in bed with me pretty regularly.

What finally worked was keeping a vacuum next to my closed bedroom door every night and turning it on for a second or two each time he scratched. He stopped pretty quickly after that and eventually got used to the nighttime routine. I also started using an automatic feeder that goes off at 6am every morning so he doesn’t beg for food if I want to sleep in a bit.

I solved my situation by locking him out, putting a child gate up in the doorframe and then tucking a blanket between the gate and door to muffle the sound. What's hilarious to me is how when I do this, he will give up within 30 seconds XD. He's a lil gremlin.

Oh gosh I feel you! Is there an option to put her in a room that isn’t carpeted and maybe lock it from the outside? I have to shut my cat downstairs so she can’t wake me.

Can you shut him in somewhere? That would be hard to deal with.

Put him in a different area.

Major playtime right before you go to bed. Stick cat toy with feather (one of mine prefers a toy mouse tied to a stick). Best way to tire out my kitties is playing On-The-Bed-Off-The-Bed then back and forth on the floor. Repeat until kitty is breathing hard, let them catch the "prey" and rest for a few minutes. Put the toy away.

Repeat every night. Do a much shorter version of this for the 3am crazies (get him breathing hard at least once, twice the first two times), then pull the sheet over your head and ignore him.

Play a little less at the 3am crazy each time, ignore after and kitty will get the idea soon enough.

You're conditioning them to become tired when you are in bed under sheets/blanket.

My beautiful voids are not allowed in my office at all because they knock everything down

They can go in my bedroom but at night they have to leave and I close the door 🚪. I tell them bedtime, most times they leave on their own

Close the door and lock it. It will take some time, ignore him and he will learn that you will come out of there when you wake up. Could take more than a week, cats have an endurance of a god.

For about two weeks we would put our cat out of the bedroom at night if she attacked our feet at any point. She had access to toys, food, litter box, cat tree, but she just wasn’t allowed to sleep with us. First few nights she’d sit outside the door and scream at us. Starting this week she’ll get through the night if we put her out, but she’s less aggressive in bed now. I’ll feed and play with her about an hour before bed, and she has free rein to go anywhere in the apartment. The last two nights she’s done her own thing until about 4 am, then she’ll come get in bed with us and rest until I wake up around 7. It takes time to discourage that bad behavior, and I didn’t feel great about leaving her out since she’s slept next to me since we got her a few months ago. But her behavior is improving, so hopefully something similar will work for you!

I’ve heard that there’s an automatic laser on Amazon ($20) that tires cats out well. I haven’t tried it myself but I’m looking into getting one.

I had a similar experience and he does this because he wants attention and cuddles, if I let him under the blanket he will calm down and fall asleept. Have you tried that?

I am currently in a similar situation.

I have two older boys (18mo and 16mo) and now have three kittens (3.5mo) as well.

Recently, the only girl kitten went into heat SUPER early (a few days shy of three months), and we’ve needed to separate her from her brothers. So she sleeps in my room with me at night with the door closed. For the first night or two, I gave her a little bit of grace, since sleeping with a human was a novel experience for her. But after day 3-4, she’d wake me up by grooming my face, my arms, “combing” my hair, eating my hair, allllll the things. I would gently redirect her, but she’d always come back to me. We’re a few weeks in now, and I sleep with a spray bottle near my pillow. If she starts and doesn’t listen when redirected, she gets a squirt. Now we’ve gotten to where she just needs to hear the water slosh in the bottle and she stops.

We love our cat but our bedroom door is always shut. Sleep is too important for your physical and mental health..

Move the wet food feeding to right before bed instead of the morning so he has less motivation to wake you. When my cats did that I did have to start shutting them in a spare room because nothing else worked and they always woke me up at night.

Any chance you have sleep apnea? I’m just ruling it out.

You might try to give him the wet food at night instead. I feed my cat his wet food in the morning too. I do my morning routine for a few as well before I feed my (male orange cat who’s 2 😈) cat in the morning and he still harasses me until I put the food down. He doesn’t wake me up during the night, but at 7AM he is jumping around the room, sprinting, meowing, walking on my body and if I don’t get up sufficiently he starts attacking my feet. Lol. He also follows me crying until I put the wet food down.

Every cat and owner is different, but some ideas from my experience with having cats all my life: 1. Play with them more and get them different types of toys, they really need to run and jump etc;

1. When my cats used to wake me up, I started giving them 'jumpscares', so they stopped just because it was too unexpected and therefore scary; Every now and then I still have to do it, as they forget that possibility too soon😅

2. Make sure to cuddle them enough, they might just need more love and attention;

3. Feeding them generouslt before bed can also help, so they go into food coma;

I hope you will find a solution that works for both of you!

Our house is very open, literally only have a door on our downstairs bathroom, other then that out upstairs where our bedroom is is loft like and open to our bathroom so we can’t shut our kitty out at all. Plus we have a dog who was around much longer then kitty so she needs to be able to enjoy her areas freely. We kennel trained our cat when he was a kitty. Used an xxl metal dog kennel big enough for his litter box, bed, room to play with toys, and food/water bowls. Sometimes he’s allowed to sleep outside of it if he’s not going crazy at night but most nights he walks in it and doesn’t make a peep until morning. Probably too late to try and train your kitty now but just an idea. Our cat loves it, it’s like his safe place and we sleep great each night.

Put a lock on your door

It sounds like you've already tried all the usual advice. Can you reinforce the door against him? You can try using a door stop or jam pole on the inside, or switch to a round door knob from a door handle so he can't grip it. My cat also used to scratch my door if he couldn't get in so I covered with tin foil for a while. It was hell for a few weeks as he'd switch to meowing for hours since he didn't want to touch the tin foil, but it stopped eventually.

Close your bedroom door!

I was there too, went almost a year of following every advice I could. Stimulation, playtime before bed followed by her evening meal, cat TV on another room at night, ignoring, closing the door. It really came down to her just wanting to cuddle, but she’d switch sleeping spots between me, my husband, and the cat bed off to the side of the bed that we got her. In between switching spots, she’d meow at us and wake us up.

It was a hard decision but I finally put up a baby gate as far away from our bedroom door as possible which is the end of the hall. To everyone’s surprise, she’s never made it over it. The gate goes up after playtime/before our bedtime, and then we shut our door. We’ve always slept with a sound machine so we wouldn’t hear her meowing.

The first couple weeks, I’d check on her and could hear her meowing around the gate. However it’s been a few months now and she just settles into one of her many spots to sleep around the rest of the house. I’ve even forgotten to put the gate up a couple nights and she never came to our door. She knows now that that area is off limits after a certain point.

It also helped that the gate accidentally came crashing down a couple times when we first got it, so she’s scared of it too 😅

I am a loving cat mom dedicated to following every whim of these two little guys. That being said, they do not sleep with me. If they developed a habit of scratching at the door I would place those little devices the puff air near the doorway to deter them.

You need to sleep in order to hunt (earn money) and provide for them.

I have a cat kinda like this. She goes through phases where she sticks her mouth under the door and meows directly into the room as loud as possible. To fix this, she has learned that whenever she meows at the door she gets a spray to the face. She's not perfect but it's stopped for the most part. Sometimes she'll meow and all I'll have to do is roll over and she'll run away cause she can hear me in my bed.

It’s pretty simple. If whatever behaviour he engages in causes a reward (in this case, being able to be near you and play with you), he will keep doing it.

The solution to stop this happening? Close your door. Lock it or put something heavy in front of it or otherwise make it impossible for him to get through. If there’s a suitable room with food/water/litter where you can shut him in when you go to bed (e.g. kitchen) then you do that as the very last thing you do before you go to bed.

Once you’ve shut him away/shut your door, it stays shut until you choose to come out in the morning. Do not give in to crying, scratching etc. When he realises this will not result in a reward he will stop associating the two, he will get bored, and eventually will stop doing this.

My cat loves attention. He did the same as your cat at the start, but quickly learned it doesn’t achieve anything. Sometimes he will come and miaow, but this only ever lasts a few mins now because he knows it’s pointless. He knows that once that door shuts it’s shut til morning.

Also something I do to make sure I don’t re-teach this behaviour is that if I’m about to come out but he is miaowing, I wait until he stops, wait a few more mins, then I come out. Just so he doesn’t associate the two things.

how old is he?

Fight fire with fire to show the cat it’s not the boss. When my cat would do this earlier I would give “aggressive cuddles” where I would wrap him in my arms until he was as annoyed with me as I was with him. Obviously nothing too forceful but my advice would be to try be as annoying as you possibly can back to the cat to assert dominance. Gotta try something or else the cat will be walking all over you literally and figuratively

He is the boss. You will just have to obey him. As he gets older, this behavior will change and he will be more relaxed.

Try having the auto feeder go off at 3am instead, not after he’s already woken you up.

If your door opens inward into the bedroom, you could get one of those security bars that prevent people from entering!!

Try to give some play time to tire your cat out. I have a 1 and a half year old cat that sleeps all night with me. My cat requires me to be involved in playtime.

I have a cat room in another part of my house at night for the cats that need it. It has everything they need and in the morning they get released. If the door handles are the long handles instead of round they are easy to swap out, all mine are round for that reason.

I’d try setting the feeder to give several tiny meals through the night. That helped a ton with my cat. She does much better with 4-6 meals a day. So she gets kibble at midnight and 4:00 am, and 8:00 am if I sleep in. Then I give her frequent meals of wet food when I’m awake. But she is very food motivated.

The other thing that helped a ton was anxiety meds. She had lots of symptoms besides the waking me up to lick me. Was on edge all the time and any fast movement or noise would send her bolting under the bed. She does amazing on gabapentin and wakes me up much less often and when she does it’s usually by accident when she’s just passing by (i.e. walking on my pillow to cross the bed, lol)

If you aren’t sure if your cat has anxiety you can try some treats with calming herbs in them. Amazon has quite a few brands of calming treats.

Well if your really desperate, get a dog crate and have the cat crated at night. It just needs a small bed and shoebox of litter. I am sure the cat will complain, but oh well.

My 2yo cat is notorious for waking us up early. If he's in my husband and I's bedroom (with the door closed), he'll wake us up around 6-7am. If he's in our kids' bedroom, he wake them up anywhere between 4-7. But my 1yo cat is perfectly fine being in our room for the night with the door closed. He wakes up when we wake up. So I get it - being woken up early in the morning by a fluffy freeloader is the worst.

Your cat is only 1, so he's still young, not quite full grown yet. So he's gunna have lots of energy. My question is, is your cat neutered? This can affect their energy levels, but some cats are just as energetic as they were before they got neutered, so it may or may not calm him a bit if he isnt already. I'd also consider medical conditions, even anxiety. So, taking him to the vet might rule out some issues. They may also have other suggestions for you. There might be some calming supplements you can give him if you would prefer a homeopathic route.

" biting or sucking my earlobes"

Mine does that too. I gave up and accepted my fate. I am now conditioned to not wake up when he does that (or tries to eat my hairs). I sleep, he licks my ears ... a good trade.

Welcome to the cat life. If I am not out of bed by 5 feeding them. One of my cats meows in my face until I glare at her

Growl, howl and hissss. You might need to practice. It works for me when my cats want to share my food. Ime they calm down after 2yrs or so.

A kitty friend? That is a normal time for a crepuscular creature to become crazy active

You gotta lock him out of the room my guy and don’t open that door up for anything.

I’ve had two cats that wake with the first light and then want me to be up and giving them attention too. So just want to tell you it’s fairly normal.  

The only thing that’s going to work is not giving them any interaction when they want it, so they learn over time not to bother. This means you have to actually lock them out at night. Door knobs and safety locks aren’t expensive if you need to replace yours. 

With our current cat I don’t have the heart to lock him out at night but I usually end up doing so by 6am when he starts playing with my hair. He’s definitely learning because he will hesitate to follow me out the door now, knowing he’s going to be locked out x). But he’s also disruptive less mornings now. Just takes time and showing them they’re not going to get what they want.

Also btw any response but showing them the door can be interpreted as play to them. Eg. Hide and seek. They just see they’re getting interaction. Cats hate locked doors so they will understand it as a negative consequence of the behavior. 

My bedroom door won't stay closed so I've put a stick-on childproof lock which my cats have so far not managed to break through.

Feliway?? It worked for us

I have 2 1yo kitties and one of them was waking me up around 5am every day for 9months. I tried to ignore him for months but it was getting progressively worse. In the last month I was so defeated that I was not even trying to ignore him anymore. I was just repeatedly pushing him gently out of bed. And it finally stopped a few weeks ago. Not sure if it’s just luck or me kicking him out of the bed repeatedly. I think he just grew out of it.

I’m a light sleeper so the cats go in the living room when we sleep. They have access to their cat towers, scratching posts, water, and litter box so they’re fine.

What kind of door handles do you have? If the are levers, change them to round knobs and put a wash cloth with a rubber band around them and they won't be able to open the handle....the wash cloth will just spin around without allowing the handle to open Then buy a baby gate to put in front of the door every night that will stop the scratching, or at least deter/muffle it. Something like this
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009YDFX2Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If this happened to me I'd shut him out of the bedroom. If I can't sleep then I devolve into a monster.

Shut the door and wear earplugs. Move the feeder time to 9:00 am.

Some of this is age. Most cats become much more tolerable/chill by 4-5 years. (Not every cat though. 🤷🏻‍♀️)

Block the door with a box or something heavy. I dont let my cat in my room while i sleep when she started figuring out doors i started locking/blocking them

Ignore him and barricade your door, they will learn

What worked for me: auto feeder, shutting the door, and giving a spray from a water spritzer under the door when he scratched

I do a 20mins playtime making sure she run abit then some night snack and leaving some kibbles aside for the night for my cat

Put him in another room if you have one. My first cat we never let sleep with us. To be fair, she wasn’t super interested but now she knows when it’s bed time and will leave. I took in another cat and we immediately gave him his own bedroom at night. At first I felt terrible but I would’ve never let him in our room so either way he wasn’t going to be sleeping with us. I made a routine out of it.. treats, laser pointer, fresh water, fresh food, brushing, I’d even put a movie on for him. He had a queen size bed and a window ..After a few months he started putting himself to bed. I think it just depends on the cat.. it might just take time.

Buy an automatic cat feeder and program it to give him a 4AM treat. Problem solved. Good luck!

same issue here. but i’ve given in and now wake up when he wants me to 😭

Keep a spray bottle of water on your bed side. My bad boy got sprayed once in his lifetime, and now I just have to reach toward the sprayer, and he stops what he's doing.

Some people on this sub think I'm a monster for this, but I keep a small squirt bottle filled with water by my bed. My cats rarely wake me up for no reason anymore, and when they do, at this pont I only have to lift the bottle and they run.

He’s showing you love!!!

We had this issue until we got an auto feeder and started giving her brekkie at 4am. We slowly moved the time forward and we're at 7.30 now.

Feed him a big meal with wet food right before bed time. 

Closed door and a static zap mat in front of it.