I need some advice. My downstairs neighbor has been complaining about Chaos and Mayhem running around during the night and early morning (5:30 am, when I get up) while she’s trying to sleep. I can’t blame her – they’re loud: “thundering paws” comes to mind. But I also can’t think of any great solutions, either. I know that while I was on medical leave, my schedule was very messed up (um, I might’ve unthinkingly played fetch with Mayhem after 11:30 pm on more than one occasion) and I think that was the final straw for my downstairs neighbor.
About all I can think of to do is to shut them out of the bedroom overnight and in the morning. Anyone else have ideas on how to tame the thundering paws of my extremely active kitties?? ETA: Some additional information – I have carpet. Chaos is around 16 or 17 pounds, so when he runs, you definitely notice. May is 10 pounds.
Ok, onto some random stuff. Congrats to Marina and La, who were the winners of my Superpower Blogiversary Contest!
I stopped at my quirky neighborhood liquor store Monday evening (if you’ve ever wondered where all the body mod people work? Yup – that’s the place) and mentioned my annotated beer case. She just rolled her eyes and said that “the boys in the back room” got a little bored sometimes…
Seems like it’s cats two, Christmas trees zero so far…
Some of you may be aware that I have extremely eclectic musical tastes. 🙂 In fact, if it’s by a top 40 artist from the past 10 years? I probably haven’t heard it. Anyway, there’s some pretty interesting holiday music out there, especially if the traditional songs are already getting on your nerves. Here are just a few – please note that this is all listen at your own risk!
Aquarium Drunkard has a nice playlist, including songs like Mae West’s “Put the Loot in the Boot, Santa” and Big John Greer’s “We Wanna See Santa Do the Mambo.”
Big Rock Candy Junk Shop Christmas will be available for a few more days. There’s some overlap with the playlist up at Aquarium Drunkard, but that’s because Aquarium Drunkard’s songs came from Big Rock Candy Mountain! Check daily for more fun songs, too – yesterday’s songs were from Billy Childish & the Musicians of the British Empire (“Christmas Hell” and “Christmas Lights”).
Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands has a free and legal Christmas mix up, which includes songs from Bright Eyes, Sufjan Stevens, and Death Cab for Cutie.
Suburban Sprawl has its annual Christmas compilation up. Some of the songs include Love Axe’s “Happy New Year,” and Jon Cendrowski’s “Dick in a Box.” You can also download their previous compilations.
Snow, snow, snow. We had more yesterday. Some pictures from work before I spent an hour driving 8 miles.
Generally, the world continues on a little further…
“Do I look as if I could possibly be noisy?! It has to be the big kitty.” -Mayhem
I can’t even imagine that May and Chaos are loud!
sorry, you know I’m a dog owner. the best idea I can come up with right now is rugs (lots of them) or carpet floor.
try sleeping in the bedroom and games in the living room, but, at different times.
they may be worse if you lock them out of the bedroom.
goodluck.
Carpet made a massive difference to us, Mummy and Daddy don’t even hear us moving around the house now.
Kitty mittens. Rugs (probably you don’t want these?) Set up a bed for you in the liv room for a few nights?
Yay, me!
Suggest she wear ear plugs 😉 Or get one of those “white noise” things?
Aren’t your floors already carpeted? Then there’s nothing left except to quit playing with them!
C’mon, cats running on the floor bug her? Tell her to move – there’s a solution or maybe tape cotton balls on the bottoms of their feet.
Shut them out of the bedroom? I hope neither of them saw you typing that…
What’s your flooring? Could you throw down a rug or two to absorb some of the oomph?
My two still have a regular cat olympic spot around 2 a.m. each day – we have wooden flooring and one cat is partially crippled, let’s just say it’s not a quiet event.
Tell her to get a cat and to lighten up. Sheesh.
OK. So, my guys are shut out of the room at night (otherwise I’d get no sleep), and they usually sleep all night. They then wake me up by pawing on the door at 5:15am – when one of my neighbours downstairs leaves for work. Not much you can do about it, but maybe put away their toys at night? If I let them in the room, it would be anarchy…
Atticus and Mae are pretty tame now as senior cats, and Gandalf’s witching hour is usually after dinner.
I know how frustrating incessant noise from overhead can be (I have a 6’6″ upstairs neighbor with very large feet and his shoes dropping to the floor are loud enough to wake the dead…not to mention he must be flat-footed or something). But really, I find it hard to believe that cats are making that much noise.
How about large-ish area rugs with an extra layer of padding underneath to help absorb the sound? Or, if you’re able, adding a thicker layer of padding under any existing carpet?
Otherwise, suggest she get a kitty of her own and when her own is mewing and playing all night she’ll forget all about yours…
Tell me again why this hearing thing is so great…….
Feed them earlier? I was surprised your neighbor complained because I see carpeting in your pictures. Would they meow at a closed door (my cats do)?
It’s funny how some cats are so noisy and others so quiet. Jester is bigger but very soft-footed, and I never realize she’s nearby until I see her, whereas Munchkin is tiny, but very bouncy and I always know when she arrives.
My old roommate and I had a similar situation. Our cats liked to run up and down the staircase at odd hours. Fortunately, our downstairs neighbors/landlords were in the advanced stages of deaf.
Try separating them at night – worked for us.
Separating them at night is the only thing that works for us too. Although we have to be careful which one we leave out to run free. Teek likes to push all his toys down the top stairs, shove them down the second set of stairs, then drag them all back up and do it over again. Luckily the girls down below never take out the garbage or shovel snow, so I don’t have to feel bad.
Maybe you should try working out on that training machine that’s still in the box. That seemed to work for some other neighbor who complained about noise – if I remember correctly!!
You might suggest that she move to a free standing house or be thankful that all she’s got above her is noisy cats. Or you could host a rowdy drunken dance party one night. She might be grateful the next day that it’s only noisy cats running around.
(Sorry if I sound pissy, but I lived above a woman who complained about every single sound we made right up until the day she moved out. Some people are just not cut out for apartment living.)
Maybe your neighbor should just get a loud barking dog to make noise back? No. How about putting egg cartons on you floor to deaden the sound? No. I got nothing. Sorry.
Kitty valium? I dunno…I think that she needs to suck it up, its part of living in an apartment building. You’re not having parties and insane hours. The people upstairs from me always sound as if they are elephants, but they’re just walking….what am I supposed to do? Go tell them to tip-toe their own apartment? I guess you could TRY to ask Chaos and Mayhem to tip-toe….I’m sure they’d be more than understanding. 😉
Sheesh! They live in a second floor condo with an upstairs neighbor – do they expect you to NOT move up there? Tell them you’ll try to curb it, but some noise is going to be inevitable, they’re animals for pete’s sake, not like they listen to reason or anything. Criminy!
Good luck with the kitty thing. Our cats are 20 and 16 pounds and are closed off together in the kitchen/family room area at night so they don’t wake us up by pushing on doors. Our bedroom is right above this area and I can hear them, like thundering elephants sometimes. My cats don’t use toys – they use each other. 🙂
That’s why one should always move into the top floor of any building. :o) I think your neighbor is just going to have to deal. Or move. She should be glad its not kids! Then there would be crying and whatnot to go along with the stomping and banging.
Milo cries at the door all night if we lock him out, and then I can’t sleep. A cat who is used to coming and going won’t like being locked out.
Our downstairs neighbor probably hates us, because my husband walks on his heels, hard. And he likes to get up at 5:30am.
How about crates?
Oooh, that’s a tough one. I also have no helpful advice, but I can sympathize–my rental contract for my apartment clearly states I’m not to run water/flush after 10pm or before 7am. I can’t figure out if there’s any kind of ‘food poisoning exemption’!?! So far no one has complained, but then I live (literally) on the freeway, so I don’t think they can hear much over the semis…
I agree that they should be grateful you’re not running a tango school up there – for heaven’s sake! Maybe you could suggest the noise cancelling earphones….
Buy her a white noise machine?
I am lucky not to have this problem – no one seems to live in my building, and no one has complained (although I have had to complain to my twenty-something neighbor about her moving furniture around in the middle of the night to get ready for an equally loud tryst…). Plus, my kitties seem to sleep through the night.
I have had this problem in the past, though, and it sucks.
So, if you care at all about maintaining good relations with your neighbor, I’ve got two suggestions:
1. try spraying the kitties with water if they make a lot of noise at night. Hopefully they will learn.
2. rather than telling your neighbor to buy earplugs, offer to buy her a white noise machine. If she turns you down, she has to accept responsibility for being irritated. If she accepts the offer, then she has to admit that you have gone out of your way to accommodate her.
Man, if that just isn’t the smuggest expression on her face. LOL. Here is my advice. Tell your neighbor that she farts and snores in her sleep and it’s so loud it keeps you up, but you don’t complain, so you figure you’re even. Yep, that’s my advice.
I’ve been seeing quite a few blogs lately talking about Feliway cat-calming spray or plug-ins. Maybe they’d help at night?
Apartment living would be so much better if there were some way to contain all sound in each apartment.
Good luck!
I go with the “good Lord, at least it’s not a 2 year old throwing a tantrum or even worse, a 200 pound man who gets off work at 2 and decides to do his laundry then.”
(I have lived in BOTH situations…two kitties running down the hallway is MINOR).
And it’s too nice of YOU to buy the whitenoise machine, but I’d suggest it to her as a purchase.
(Unless you really want to be nice to her!)
Separating them might be the solution – do they sleep with you? Close your bedroom door so they stay in the room with you?
Failing all that…I’d say – kitty valium. Just a touch.
Maybe.
(((hugs)))
maybe you could make a robot cat that would stalk them all night long and lock all three of them in a padded room. the cats will love it
I hate sharing walls, and had hoped I would never do it again. Luckily, my new neighbors haven’t said a thing about Harley running up and down the stairs (she’s 20 pounds!).
Years ago, I had downstairs neighbors who asked me not to do laundry after 7:30 p.m. Right.
I agree that closing them up in the bedroom with you might be a solution, although I’d make sure there was a litter box and food in the room, which would be annoying to this human.
I have no idea how to solve your problem. I wouldn’t think cats would make enough noise to complain about.
I think they might make more noise banging on the door if you lock them out. My Ricky just sits by the door and starts yowling at the top of his lungs (he’s part siamese and very very vocal). My cats settle right down when I feed them. This won’t work if Chaos and May are free fed. Do you own something that gets their attention and and maybe scares them a little? I have a chinese paper yo yo that freaks Ricky out so much that he’ll instantly stop what he’s doing (i.e. chewing on the back of Phoebe’s neck) and run under our bed.
Keeping my opinions to myself about the validity (or sanity) of the “noise” claim (oops I guess you could read between the lines)I think you’re on to something by keeping the bedroom closed – but do worry that it may just create a different kind of noise “Mommy let me in” “Mommmyyyyyy” “MOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”
Was she complaining before you were on the medical leave? I guess all you can do is try to keep them calm at night–she probably notices it more while lying in bed. How about a bedtime feeding? Then maybe they’ll take a little nappy after eating.
I don’t really have a solution to your problem, but I had a similar thing happen when I was younger that was pretty funny.About 25 years ago I lived in an upstairs apt. that did not allow pets (impossible to find pet-friendly apts in those days). My two kitties at that time would rampage during the day while I was at work, and the downstairs neighbor kept complaining that me and my boyfriend were running around our apt chasing each other! He didn’t know about our cats since they were hidden, so he thought it was us!!
We just kept telling the manager that we worked all day and it couldn’t be us. Poor guy downstairs was known by the managers to have some mental issues, so when we denied, they just didn’t believe him. It was pretty funny at the time! But I couldn’t risk outing my kitties and getting kicked out! I had a 22-pound kitty at that time, so I’m sure it was pretty thundering!
Yes, one of the many things I’m going straight to H*ll for! And now that I’m a little more mature and like my quiet, I still feel bad for that guy sometimes…
I feel for your neighbour, because when Dave and I lived in an apartment there were two cats upstairs that sounded like they were going to fall through the ceiling. But — that is an aspect of apartment living and part of me thinks your neighbour might have to suck it up just like I did.
The only other things I can suggest are to put away the kitty toys at night and perhaps separate them overnight. Seems unfair, but…what else can you do?
Seriously? As a long time cat mommy and apartment dweller (mostly with hardwood floors and cats the size of Chaos – three of them) I NEVER once had a neighbor complain about the cat noise. I bet you anything she’s trying to find a reason to get out of her lease. If you have carpet and live in a building that has floors sturdy enough for humans to walk on, she can’t hear that much. Some people are just complainers.
I got nothin’. It’s tough living in an apartment… Oh wait. I’m sure you have already seen these, but…
http://www.kittywigs.com/wigindex.html
Get these for the kids and perhaps they’ll spend their time lounging and just looking beautiful? 😉
Sorry… Foam padding over the carpet? (They’d destroy it in a day, I bet, but it might work…)
Ask her if you can come down & listen while someone plays with the cats loudly?
Do you think she has any agenda?
Good grief! Unfortunately if you live below someone you’re going to hear some noise. It could be much worse i.e. you are running a noisy washing machine late at night or you have a particularly fractious child who screams a lot!
I think the extra padding and carpeting is a good way to go – is there any way you can get extra insulation in the ceiling voids? It might be an idea to find out where in your apartment the noise is worst and shut them out of that area.
Good luck!
You could get some of those interlocking cork flooring squares. They’re super durable, insulating, and noise reducing. Pull up the carpeting & put those in and it should help. But it will cost some time & $$ of course.
Congrats to the girls!
Aside from a distraction in the other room between those hours the locking out may be the only answer. Lol…stalker kitty has been good to the tree so far..although it only has lights on it so far. I am still slightly concerned.
Snow! Ours is already gone…but our water still remains. the downstairs did dry though. Now to find someone to lay new carpet and padding. (insurance note: flooding definition: ANY water from a source outside of the home. So even if it is not standing water but did not come from a pipe from within the house it is flooding. Guess who’s getting carpet as a family xmas gift!
I have an idea! let Sean and Will play in your house for a few days and your neighbor will never think that Chaos and May are loud ever again!!!
Oh no! Well, shutting them out of the bedroom sounds like an option.
What kind of floors do you have? If you have hardwood floors, putting down a deluxe, thick rug pad plus a large area rug might help. This might even work on top of carpeting. Sigh… neighbors!!!
Hmmm, I have no thoughts about the cats. It’s too bad she just can’t tune it out. I guess non cat (pet) owners just can’t do that. Unless a cat either lays down on my head (and it happens almost daily), or plucks at my son’s door in the middle of the night, I just don’t hear my cats being noisy.
Oh give me a break! I agree with everyone else. Cats running around are quieter than a toddler tantrum and usually lasts less time. Maybe you could sneak into her place and change the clock so she thinks they’re making noise later or line your entire place in exercise foam mats. Think how lovely your place would look wall to wall grey/black foam.
Or – I could bring Chief and Bert over and we could see how much noise a 4 cat fight would make!
Well, boy, but they are cats, there’s nothing you can really do to get them to not thump around.
Sorry I’m no help. I’d suggest something snotty, but I don’t think you were looking for that kind of response.
Hmmm… I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a downstairs apartment when there was not noise from above. I’ve got nothing. Even our 2 and 3 pound ferrets can be noisy running down the hall, though. If I locked Katie cat out of the bedroom, she would be yowling and banging on the door all night. I’m not sure that would be better. The only thing that comes to mind is to put down some rugs on top of your carpet, especially by the bed. I’m guessing most of the noise comes from them jumping off of the bed.
honestly, I think your downstairs neighbor should relax. My cats chase each other around a lot and I know what the “thundering paws” sounds like. I just can’t believe it’s enough to wake someone up. So I say that she should try ear plugs, if she is that sensitive. After all, you could have dogs… 🙂
Aquarium Drunkard is awesome.
Poor Chaos & Mayhem! Clearly they’re being as quiet as they can be. Wow, that sucks. I suppose the “It could be worse” isn’t going to be your tack? Because it so could be.