Digging at carpet

[tigre86]

Tucker always sleeps in my bedroom at night with the door shut. He plays in the living room with Tigerlilly and with his toys off and on from 6 pm to 10 pm. Between 10:30 and 11:00, I feed him a can of soft food. He then grooms and goes to sleep next to me. For the past six weeks, he has slept all night, only waking up around 6 am to be fed. The past few mornings though, he has woken me up at 4:45 am. And he's not begging for food...he's at the bedroom door scratching the carpet to get out. At first, I thought it was because someone else in the house is up...but no one was awake this morning and he was still doing it. He has scratching posts (both vertical and horizontal) in my room. I put pillows in front of the door and this only slows him down for about 10 minutes then he's at the carpet again. I make loud noises and say no..he leaves for a few minutes then goes back. I ignore him and he still does it. I flick his nose (I read somewhere that cats respond to that because their mothers do it when they're kittens) and he runs off then comes back. I don't know what else to do...I can't let him run the house when no one else is awake (my grandparents have limited mobility and I'm afraid they'd trip over him if they got up while I'm still sleeping). Does anyone have any other ideas? I saw some sprays at the store for scratching but I didn't know if they'd work. This is the only time he ever digs at the carpet and he doesn't scratch furniture either.

[Zilla]

Is his food water and litterbox in your bedroom?? If its not I would try that. My cats used to do this when I kept them in my room at night because I had roommates.... I used a 99 cent squirt bottle from walmart to kick their habit. Only used it twice.


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[tigre86]

^ Yep, forgot to say that, lol. I might have to see if the water trick works on him. Tigerlilly is immune to it.

[marie73]

In the meantime, to protect your carpet, I would get a plush bathroom rug and put it halfway in and out of your bedroom, so at least he's not damaging the carpet.