My husband and I have two cats. A 2-year-old girl lap cat who just sits around and sleeps all day hahah, and a polar opposite 1.5-year-old rambunctious boy who just doesn’t STOP running around, knocking things over, eating things that aren’t food, meowing relentlessly.

For some more context, he was a rescue and he was rescued as a kitten. We fostered him for a few months and he was back and forth between our home and the pet store. When he wasn’t adopted after several months, my husband and I fell in love with him and decided to keep him. But at the time, we were still living at my mom’s house, and my mom has a very aggressive, territorial cat who would have terrorized him, so we had to keep him and our other cat in a separate room from my mom’s cat. So for about 6 months, he and our other cat were basically contained to 1 room (of course we spent time with them every day) but he didn’t have much space to run around in and we thought he’d calm down a little once he had more space to get his energy out in.

Now we moved out and brought him to our new apartment, and NOTHING HAS CHANGED. He just doesn’t sit still for more than a minute. Last night he just ran around, MEOWING like crazy for hours. We tried to hold him and he won’t sit still with us for more than a minute. The only thing that gets him to stop meowing is if we basically chase him around the house and play with him. My husband did this for about an hour. As soon as he stopped, cat is meowing again.

Our wishful thinking is that maybe he was like this because he was under stimulated in the room at my mom’s house and now he is over stimulated at the new place, and once he gets used to the new place maybe he’ll settle down? Or maybe he’ll outgrow the behavior as he gets older?

I love him SO MUCH and he is just the sweetest little creature in the world, and I would NEVER even consider giving him up, so don’t worry that isn’t even an option. But I just can’t take living like this 😭 I’m so stressed out all the time when I’m at home with him because he’s just always causing trouble and/or making noise. Please help, any suggestions for how to just make him sit down and shut up, other than actively playing with him 24/7 which obviously isn’t possible 😩