Bad Kitty

My cat has behavioral problems and it is costing me sleep. Frankly, I have probably trained him to be this way - unfortunately, my vet thinks he may be hard to "untrain" at this point. She also doesn't believe, as most vets would agree, that he is capable of retaliatory peeing. Now, he doesn't do this regularly - not for a long time actually - but he has peed on my floor. Actually - once he peed on Ryan's shoe, and I thought this to be a very carefully and well planned out act of retaliation. Interesting that I have had no problem with him peeing since Ryan and his cat left. My vet just doesn't believe that he is capable of carrying on a sophisticated enough thought process to plan to hold his pee until I get home from a weekend away, and then purposely peeing right in front of me just to piss me off. If you knew my cat - you might disagree with her.

My cat is persistent - that's how I describe him. He gets whatever he wants (like me), which is probably how I trained him to be this way. I can't figure out though why he wakes me up so damn early in the morning. At 5:45 I have a kitty, sitting next to my head, whacking me on the forehead with his paw. Sometimes he bites me actually and he once cut my scalp open when he landed on my head in a flying leap off of the dresser and with all four paws wrapped around my head, attacked me. He doesn't get canned cat food in the morning anymore, and I leave the water in the extra bathroom running at all times (because he will only drink running water). I think he just wants me to pet him because sometimes if I do pet him, he goes away. He is better and worse at various times - but lately, it has been horrible. I sleep with a squirt bottle next to my head, which doesn't work at all, and I have even tried the remote vacuum cleaner starter at the suggestion of my cousin's cat behaviorist. That didn't work either and the neighbors probably didn't appreciate it at 3 a.m.

I just can't take this anymore. I don't get any sleep and it's because of a cat. So, at 5:15 this morning, when he decided to sit on my chest and chew through the strap on my tank top, I locked him in my extra bathroom. This is only a so so solution because he has amazing endurance when it comes to "pawing" the door. He can do this for like 3 hours. I always turn the light on for him cause it's dark in there - maybe the dark would make him sleep. Who knows. I have to sleep with a pillow over my head to drown out the noise - maybe I'll try the fan instead.

Anyway, so I did manage to fall back asleep this time (rare for me), only to dream that I was being woken up by my cat!!!!!!!!! In this dream, the cat was locked in the extra bathroom and this bathroom shared a wall with my bedroom. My mattress was low for some reason - platform bed maybe (which it isn't) and the heat vent in the bedroom was a shared vent with the bathroom - poor design if you ask me. The next thing I know - the cat has gotten into the heat vent from the bathroom and is whacking me on the head with his paw through the vent into the bedroom and meowing incessantly. Needless to say, this woke me up for real and I let the cat out of jail.

Help. I don't know what to do. My life is being destroyed by a cat.