How do cats know what time it is?

[grumpyduck]

Seriously... we have two cats. One of them jumps on the bed at 7:00 in the morning, give or take a few minutes, almost every day. He was doing this before the time change and he's still doing it. The light outside changes slightly every morning. There's no alarm clock.

I keep asking him, but he won't answer.

Anybody else have this happen?

[dameatball]

1. There are things in life that humans are not allowed to know. You have stumbled onto one of them.

[Lindsay]

7. So very much

this.

[zipplewrath]

2. Probably you

probably something you're doing that alerts him. I swear our cat can hear my eyes open.

[Permanut]

3. Do they have cell phones?

[Ohiogal]

4. I don't know

if they observe the light coming into the room, or the slight change? Is there a noise in the house or in your neighborhood he hears at that time every day? Or perhaps just his internal clock. Animals are pretty amazing.

I had a friend whose dog knew what time the kids came home from school on the bus. Her Cocker Spaniel jumped up on the couch to look out the window a few minutes before the bus came. She always knew a few minutes ahead of time when it was going to come.

[brewens]

11. I wonder if the dog can hear the bus that far out, stopping up the road to let other kids off?

When I was a kid, our dog would without fail be in the front window peeking out between the drapes when we came home if the family was out doing anything. We wondered if she was there like that the whole time we were gone? One time my brother stayed home but was across the street at the neighbors and saw her poke her head through the drapes just as we came down the street. A couple other cars had just gone by too. We knew then that she knew the sound of our car, and could hear us coming from quite a ways away.

[Ohiogal]

13. That could be a possibility.

My dog knows the sound all of our cars make (I have 2 sons still at home) and she even remembers the sound of my sister's car who only comes to visit a couple times a year. She acts happy and excited when she hears those familiar cars. If it's a car she's never heard before, she barks her head off using her "Warning" bark.

[bearsfootball516]

5. It's probably an internal alarm clock.

I wake up at 7:30 to start getting ready for work every morning, without an alarm. My body just knows. I'm sure animals are the same.

[Big Blue Marble]

6. My cats also have internal clocks.

They are creatures of habit, loving predictably.

I think they follow circadian rhythms, environmental cues, and their stomach alarm.

[elleng]

8. How do ospreys know to arrive in Maryland from their winter vacays in South America

@ St. Patrick's Day?

NATURE knows!

[brewens]

9. My cat never wakes me up, but seems to know when it's my bedtime. She will usually

be sacked out at the foot of the bed awhile before I go in. Nice of her to make a warm spot for my feet. I usually go to bed right at nine most nights. If I'm very late at all, she comes out to the end of the hallway where she can see me, and makes this sort of meow sound, obviously wanting me to get off my ass and come to bed.

I get up and she trots right in and jumps on my dresser to wait for me to get in bed, then jumps down by me to lay down and get petted. She knows somehow.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. I have a weirder story than that...

A few years ago I had to catch an early flight to go out of town for my job, meaning I had to get up at 4:00 a.m. in order to make it to the airport on time. Normally I'd get up at 6:30, awakened by an alarm clock, quickly followed by cat pestering. But this time for some reason I either didn't set the alarm for 4:00, or didn't set it to go off. In any event, shortly after 4:00 a.m. that morning there was a cat standing on my chest, howling his head off. If the cat hadn't awakened me at that very abnormal hour I wouldn't have made my flight (and have been in trouble at work). I will never be able to figure out how the cat knew to wake me up. He hadn't ever done anything like that before and hasn't done it since.

[Ohiogal]

12. WOW!!! Your cat could read your mind, do you think?? Crazy!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. I don't know how he did it, but I spent most of the flight that morning

thinking WTF???

[unblock]

15. Cats probably wonder the same thing about humans

"Every day at breakfast time they just magically show up with a tin of tuna! How do they know?"

[procon]

16. Both my cats know when it's bedtime.

I usually snuggle into bed at 11pm to read or watch a video on my tablet. Starting at 10:45, the cats will come to sit in front of my chair, starting at me intently -- yeah, those piercing looks speak volumes -- until I get up and we can all go off to bed. I think they just enjoy burying themselves in the fluffy warm comforter so they feel my body heat, but it's a mutual attraction.

[SonofDonald]

17. The KittyMonster knows

Every morning I have to take pain meds, it's what wakes me up, I lay in bed for an hour till they kick in.

And every morning rain or shine at precisely the correct moment she hops up on the windowsill, turns and meows at me and gives me the look.

I slide open the window for her and I kid you not within one minute I can hear the birds start to sing outside.

There's no way she can hear them before they start up, the light is never the same due to cloud cover or rain or shine and she can't tell time that I know of.

But she knows within one minute when the birds will start singing.

Of course when I ask her how I don't get an answer, some things we aren't meant to know.
🐱

[silverweb]

18. Only 7 am?

Can we get your alarm clock to talk with my alarm clock? Mine attacks at 6 am. I figured she'd switch to 7 with the time change, but she only did that once and then reset herself to 6 again.