Night Howling

Don’t be disturbed if and when your cat starts howling (blood curdling howling) in the middle of the night and early morning hours. Yes, your sleep is disturbed, but chances are, there is nothing actually wrong with your cat.

Cats are very smart, and if you get up just once and say, give your cat a treat, they will continue the howling every night to get that treat, and the cat will have you, their human, well trained in a matter of days. It’s much better not to start that practice in the first place.

It’s perfectly normal for the cat’s human to think that something is wrong and to get up and check on the cat, I’ve done that myself, but after one or two nights, you have to stop. Get ear plugs or just shut the noise out. After a while, the cat will realise that you’re not getting up and it will stop.

Researchers don’t totally understand why some cats may do this, but since they are such smart creatures, it is highly likely that they just want some company or a snack or to go outside and hunt or some other perfectly normal cat behaviour.

Night howling is, however, a very common behaviour amongst senior cats. One of the reasons is thought to be that the cat wakes up and is either disoriented or suddenly realises no one is around, and the howling is to get a reassuring word from their human. Since my own elderly cat is now deaf, I just turn a light on that she can see from where she is to let her know that she’s not alone. And some early morning hours she does her blood curdling yowling at the top of her voice, but I have learnt to ignore it and she stops and goes back to sleep. Senior cats can also suffer from dementia, and both day and night howling tends to be more common in these situations.

So, if your cat is night howler, don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal cat behaviour.