So this cat aka the absolute hands-down rule you shouldn't break when moving in together for the first time. Piper was exceptionally well behaved for the first two weeks we owned her-also known as the foster-to-adopt period. Basically, if we decided she wasn't working out we could return her and get a full refund of the adoption fees, no questions asked. She didn't scratch anything, climb on anything, meow obnoxiously, and ate whatever food we gave her.
After week 2...she slowly started showing us what she was really like. She started using the table legs as a scratching post (it was $60 from Ikea so I'm not complaining). She didn't like the new food we bought her. She'll occasionally get really hyper late at night and sprint across our bedroom, jump on Dan's nightstand, lamp, dresser, window sill and run back out the door. She tries to get out of the apartment if the door is open too long. She sleeps in the bed. She sleeps on top of the table. She climbs on the desk. She desperately tries to get to Dan's plant on the bookshelf. She's obsessed with the bathtub and sink so they're now constantly covered in cat hair. I've even found her on my dresser. These new behaviors were annoying, but not the end of the world.
And then, the world ended, sort of. Dan's schedule has been less consistent and he doesn't always have to be at work at 7:30am anymore. Since he normally feeds Piper at 6am before he leaves, she expects to be fed then. No later than 6:20am on the mornings Dan has a late start, she'll come into the room meowing to get fed. And guess who wakes up then? If you guessed me, that's correct! Only once has he heard the cat before I have. It inevitably is a horrible start to my day. To make things worse, we finally asked Dan's mom to stain and seal the Ikea dining room table and took it over to her apartment a couple of weeks ago. After losing her primary scratching post (and nap place I believe), Piper started using our bed to sleep on and the footboard to scratch. Now, almost all the furniture in our apartment was in one of our houses growing up. Almost everything, except the bed. The bed is my $800 Crate and Barrel graduation present from my mother and one of the most valuable things I own.
So on those mornings that she doesn't wake us up meowing, sometimes she'll wake us up scratching. And by us, I really mean me. We got the anti-scratching spray last week and it doesn't really seem to be working. So now we just have to keep her out of the bedroom all together. which involves covering the door with poster board and cardboard so she doesn't scratch the door up either. The only good thing that's happened so far is that my allergies don't seem to be an issue anymore, so I'll take what I can get.
I have informed Dan that there's no way we're having kids anytime soon (not that we were planning to, this just strengthens my case) because he doesn't even wake up to a hungry cat once during the night and it puts me in a bad mood. Just think of how awful I'd be to be around if I were woken up every hour or two by a hungry baby!
