The nights of an ageing animal: seven situations and what to do

By day an older animal keeps up appearances. By night it circles, whines, gets up, walks into the wrong room. The night often speaks first, and it is the part people describe least.

1. Circling at night is not attention seeking

An older animal that gets up, walks, stops in a corner and sets off again is not after your attention. Night wandering is among the things vets look at in an ageing animal, and it has several possible causes.

Pain is one of them: lying still, a body that hurts eventually demands a change of position, and getting up relieves it for a while. Cognitive decline is another, with the day and night rhythm sliding out of place.

The right response is neither to scold nor to pretend nothing is happening. It is to write down what you see, so you can describe it precisely.

2. A night light changes more than you would expect

Failing sight shows up in the dark first, because that is where the margin disappears. An animal that moved about a lit house without trouble starts bumping into things as soon as the light goes.

A small permanent light in the hallway and another near the bowls cost little and remove a good part of the night-time collisions.

The same reasoning applies to your own route in the dark: the light stops you treading on an animal that now sleeps in the middle of the corridor.

3. The route to water and to the tray has to work without light

At night an older animal will not make a detour. If the water is at the end of a hallway and the tray is upstairs, there will be an accident, and it will not be its fault.

Bring things closer. A second water bowl near the bed and a second tray on the same floor as the sleeping place remove half the night-time incidents.

For a cat, a low-sided tray is stepped into without effort. A high side, at night, with stiff joints, is enough to make the rug next to it the easier choice.

4. After a night-time accident you clean up and never scold

An animal clean for ten years that soils at night has not forgotten its training. Something has changed in its body or its head, and scolding adds fear to a problem it does not control.

The first useful move is an appointment, not an absorbent mat. Several common and treatable causes produce exactly this picture, and some clear up quickly.

In the meantime, protect the bedding and clean up without comment. An animal afraid of being told off hides to relieve itself, and the problem becomes harder to follow.

5. Bringing it closer beats keeping an old rule

Plenty of households set a sensible rule long ago: it sleeps in the other room. In an older, disoriented animal that rule produces nights of wandering and calling.

Moving its bed into your room, on the floor, often settles it within a night or two, simply because it knows where you are without having to go and find you.

Nobody will hold it against you for changing a rule for the last few years. It is one of the few things that is easy to put right.

6. Whining at a fixed hour is information, not noise

Write down the time. A complaint that returns at roughly the same point every night is a different thing from scattered whining, and that regularity interests a vet a great deal.

A complaint that falls consistently some hours after the last dose of a medication says something about how the day is covered. Drawing the conclusion is not your job, reporting it is.

Three nights noted on a piece of paper beat a long remembered description in a consulting room.

7. Your own sleep is part of the problem

Someone who has not slept for weeks decides worse, snaps sooner, and tolerates less than they used to. Saying so is not selfish, it is part of the situation.

Taking turns with someone every other night, or moving the bed temporarily, does not fix the cause but makes the weeks bearable while you look for it.

Repeated broken nights end up weighing on decisions that deserve to be made rested. That alone is reason enough to raise it with the vet.