Why your cat goes mad at three in the morning

Cats are crepuscular. Their day is built around dawn and dusk, which is when the things they evolved to hunt move. An indoor cat still runs that cycle. It wakes up loaded, finds a flat with nothing in it to catch, and burns the energy on your hallway at 3am. So the sprint down the corridor is not a behaviour problem. It is the last stage of a sequence, and the sequence has four parts: stalk, chase, catch, kill-bite, then eat. A cat that only ever gets the chase never closes the loop, which is why ten minutes of laser pointer often makes the night worse rather than better. There is nothing at the end of a red dot. What actually works is finishing the sequence before you sleep. Wand toy, let it chase properly, and then let it physically catch the toy and hold it. Then feed. Hunt, catch, eat, sleep is the order the animal is built around, and running it in that order at 10pm buys you the night. What does not work: shouting, which is attention, and getting up to feed it, which teaches the fastest lesson in the house. One exception worth knowing. A cat that has always slept through and suddenly starts yowling at night, especially an older cat, is not doing zoomies. That is a vet visit.