Every night before bed my cat either waits at the bathroom for me or runs into the bathroom at full speed for before bed bathroom time. If I’m up too late he tries to get me to go to bed to keep his routine.
Today he wasn’t there so I just went without him.
After I came out he sat at the door staring at me meowing. My wife convinced me to give him fake bathroom time, so I went to the bathroom and sat down and pet him for a minute or two then left.
Except when I left he just sat at the door, clearly knowing it wasn’t real bathroom time. He’s being yelling and howling since and refuses to come to bed now that I’ve broken our ritual.
Our cats and their rituals are insane. They have to eat separate food because my older cab needs special food. So I feed the baby cat in her own room. Heaven forbid I forget to close the door behind me, she will not eat and will follow me round the house shrieking until I close the door behind her.
My cat has learned that I will brush her each morning right after I finish making my coffee, so now the second she smells coffee she sits on the coffee table and yells until I sit down lol
Mine does this too. The combo of the noise of the coffee maker and the smell probably reinforces the routine.
Every morning my cat is waiting for me in the bathroom. He rolls around at my feet, and then guards me from the countertop while I shower.
If I somehow beat him, he screams and hammers on the door to be let in.
Our cat when I grew up didn’t have a lot of weird routines, but it wasn’t uncommon for her to accompany us on walks right up until her territory where she would stay and yell at us to come back to safety.
We could hear he calling from two blocks away.
