[Music]
please release me let me go
what's up mojo tears it is your cat daddy jackson galaxy and what does my terrible rendition of that
song have to do with today's question let me just get to it this is a question that gets asked to me
literally all the time i know i say that all the time but this one i'm talking like every 10 hours
like i get somebody on facebook or instagram or you know yelling at me from across the street
like hey jackson my cat doesn't let me sleep i'm not getting any sleep jackson it's like having
an infant i'm going nuts jackson all the time luckily we get to answer that question today
so our question comes from a lovely person named anael hope i'm pronouncing that right
and al and her cat's name is chyna with a y china so let's take a look at what nl has to say [Music]
hey jackson it's a little bit later in the day now it's 8 38 in the morning
so i have a cat she is one year and eight months old her name's chyna for some reason always
around six in the morning sometimes five on crazy days four in the morning um she uh just starts
meowing and whining and she just wants everybody in the house to get up and just start their day
at six in the morning with her i've tried many things i've tried ignoring her i have to say at
first i would just immediately get up when she did that he just walks around the house meowing until
somebody gets up and shows her the attention she wants and i know it's kind of bad because
i don't know if it's bad but i don't know if i might be reinforcing bad behavior and i would
really wouldn't want to do that yeah and then i've also had um this advice that i should just
lock her out of the room and she'll understand eventually yeah she'll make a lot of noise but
eventually she'll understand and she'll say you know what well nobody's giving me the
attention i want i guess i'll just stop what do i do in those cases how do i get her to
let me sleep at least till late in the morning and not wake me up at six in the morning thank you
very much all right and okay i see now nl's not just joking around with us she's like no i'm gonna
show you what this looks like when i get woken up my favorite part can i just say is this right here
that's our life with cats waking up in the morning with what i call a back-ended compliment
oh jackson before i say any solutions or anything just speaking straight to unl
so just imagine that you had a 16 year old or 15 year old in your house and your 15
year old's like i got my learner's permit can i borrow the car no you can't please can i borrow
the card no you can't please please please please no you can and then they sneak off
and steal the car that's what you got right about now and that's chyna in a nutshell so
the good news is she will begin to grow out of this her energy is shooting all over the place
right now she just wants to push buttons and see what she can get away with and and really
after she is after her first year or 18 months so yeah you might have another year of this but hey
you know knock wood long life for china and it will subside on its own to a certain degree with
that said let's get into what you can actually do to get some sleep one thing that's important
on al that you actually referenced was that you ignore the cat or you try to ignore chyna
i've tried many things i've tried ignoring her i have to say at first i would just immediately get
up when she did that if you just get tired of dealing with it and you either get up to feed
your cat play with your cat and even if you throw a pillow and you're like chyna cut it out not to
say that you did that i know i'm just saying i've done it hey there you have it there you have it or
just yell at them or just say please just leave me alone that is a variation of not ignoring him
rewarding behavior because she knows that if she does what she does you will respond so yeah now
and everybody out there one of the hardest parts of solving this issue is just seriously ignoring
like i do not hear you i'm pretending to be asleep right now and i'm just gonna do this until you
stop doing what you do i know that's hard and and if you feel like you just can't you just can't do
this course of action at least reward the silence at least wait until china just stops and settles
in then you can be like let's go have some food you know even if it's too early for you but you're
already awake just reward the silence and not the tantrum or the different versions of the tantrum
now this part is a little more complicated and a little more regimented and you're going to hate me
for taking you through it and everything as you might for all of this but you're going to
hate me less then you're probably sick of china every morning you know putting your butt in your
face at 6 30 in the morning there's this thing that i call the three r's the three r's routine
ritual rhythm this is how it works you start doing something every day that's a routine you're
getting into a routine after about three weeks of doing that or so that turns into a ritual meaning
that it's invested with something you now have a rhythm a rhythm to both of your lives a circadian
rhythm now naturally cats are crepuscular beings which is to say that they are the most active at
sunup and sundown because naturally outside that's where their prey is awake right the the mice and
the rats and everybody else up with the sun down with the sun okay so that's her natural rhythm
but and that's her natural rhythm as you can tell by the sun peeking in through
your shades and they all as you try to sleep and she's like well cock-a-doodle-do let's go
oh like if i was on a desert island i would i would never be at a loss i'd always
have someone to entertain myself me wilson anyway uh where the hell was i
so what's important right now is to get chyna into her three r's so what's the best way to do that
number one is to feed meals every day not free feed her okay so you want her to expect food at
a certain time her body then regulates around when that feeding time is the second thing that you do
is play time and play time should come around meal time and my favorite thing to do is your last meal
of the day for your cat should be about an hour hour and a half before you go to bed that way you
have her play energy just all freaking out then a meal now she's gonna go down hunt catch kill
eat groom sleep rinse repeat that is the three r's right there so if you get her going a little
bonkers at night right before you go to bed and you're feeding her now you're getting her to the
place where she's going to want to sleep when you sleep and if you do it late enough at night
you can buy yourself another hour at first and hey 7 30 is better than 6 30 any day of the week
so anyhow i think that you bring up something that a lot of other people are dealing with so
good on you well not so good on your housemates or your family or whoever you're talking about
but clearly china is making the rounds and seeing like okay who's going to give me what i need here
who's going to give me what i need here oh dad just gave me what i need here now i'm eating
and i'm up right so having family or roommate or whatever buy-in is really important because
you could ignore chyna as much as you want to you can get her into her rhythm as much as you want to
but until everybody has the exact same reaction to what she's doing it's never going to stop so
that's the way you sell it to everybody like if you want this to stop this is the only way to do
it if they buy in you're going to see a difference really quickly and that leads me to another point
and the point is that it really doesn't take that long in the big scheme of things in the big scheme
of her life getting her rhythm to adjust to your rhythm is not a long-term thing the way i usually
equate it to is jet lag let's say yesterday you were in paris and today you're in los angeles
you're gonna wake up at three o'clock in the morning going lunchtime and what are you gonna
do eat lunch no you're gonna just force yourself back to sleep and within about at max about a week
you're going to be back in the la rhythm of things same thing with china about after a
week of really committing to your three r's you're going to see a difference i am telling you when
when i do at home consultations i tell my clients who ask this exact same question i promise you
this is going to work i don't make guarantees but i can come really close to making a guarantee that
you'll make a difference in her life and yours if you really commit to it and if you don't i usually
give them ten days i say if you really promise me that you're committing a hundred percent to
this after ten days she wakes you up at four o'clock in the morning here's my phone number
call me at four o'clock in the morning no one's ever called me at four o'clock in the morning
but that's because it works and i'll say this again reward the silence right now it's part
of her rhythm and part of her cue system to know that once you do a certain amount of
moving and once you say her name and whatever or any of your family members does the same
then it's go time now she's going to get food the day's going to start so it's important that
you establish your daily rituals i get up i brush my teeth i go downstairs i make coffee and then
china you get your breakfast and shim's probably gonna stand by your feet meowing the entire time
commit to your rituals so that she falls in line with those the the thing that i'm
trying to get you guys to do and this is really just important in your whole life is to try to
line up your cat's body rhythm with yours with your families so that energetic spikes happen
to the best of your ability at the same time and then energetic dips happen at the same time as
well now cats don't live their lives naturally the way we do they don't have the same rhythm as we do
but the give and take here is they live with us they're in our homes now and we have to try
to coax them into our rhythm to the best of our ability listen whether it works 100 or it works 80
i still think you're going to be happy because 7 30 in the morning is a whole heck of a lot better
than 4 30 5 30. ah that's the worst and one last note for you now i really don't think that locking
her out of your bedroom is a good thing i i never think that that's a good thing i really
do think that being included in the most socially significant areas of the home is so important to
your cat's mojo to their territorial confidence in terms of where we spend the most time and where
our scent is the strongest in the house so they complement our scent and they feel more secure our
couch basically and our bed so our bedroom is just full of our scent and they want to be in there so
please don't listen to all the knuckleheads we're telling you just to shut her out of your life
it's going to you know you step on one side of the toothpaste it comes out the other you know what i
that sort of makes sense when you think about it that sort of makes sense look one way or another
you're either going to make her less secure and she's going to act out for that reason or you're
going to make her more secure and don't forget you live with a bunch of people so you want everybody
to shut their bedroom doors everybody that's just going to make china really insecure at her age and
more crazily energetic when the time comes that everybody's around so you know pick your
cat poison nope so anal thank you so much for uh sending me not just that question but that
wonderful footage because that footage itself is how i'm able to help you and that goes for you
guys as well keep sending in those questions don't forget to do exactly what anneal did which is
you speak the problem to me then you show me what you're dealing with because honestly not
only does that help me a lot but it's awfully entertaining let's see that one shot again
can't get enough of that all right you guys until next time don't forget hit the bells do the things
subscribe do all that stuff because you don't want to miss the next time
uh someone gets walked over while they're sleeping i mean that's kind of fun vicariously
right okay until next time you guys all light and all love and all mojo to you
meow