When I had a cat who would wake us up in the whee morning for food we (my family) ended up just putting him in the back room and closing the door. In the end w

When I had a cat who would wake us up in the whee morning for food we (my family) ended up just putting him in the back room and closing the door. In the end we'd walk in about an hour after was his wake us up time and he'd just be sleeping on the chair, so it didn't seem to detrimental to him. And of course there was water and I usually left a small bowl of food. Now when I left for college one day and basically disappeared from his life, he got pretty sad (he started sleeping on my bed which he'd rarely done, and meowing more often) and when I first came back on some vacation he'd barely let me pet him. It took a bit to regain his friendship. I always felt pretty bad about that, he was a great cat.