Hey everyone, first time cat owner looking for advice.

For context my girlfriend and I took in her parents cat. He's been great for the most part, but in the past month or two he's been driving us crazy in the morning.

The little shit has decided 4 am is the time everyone needs to be awake. He runs around the room meowing, we have started calling it his meow meows. If we try to ignore him he will scratch furniture and intentionally jump on our stomachs when we are least expecting it to get us up. How do I know it's intentional? He makes it a point to land on both of us in one charge and jump off the other side of the bed before we can do anything but grown in pain. He knows not to scratch the furniture, but will occasionally do it to be a dick while looking at us.

I've tried playing with him before bed, he plays for a few minutes, but then just lays there.

I've gotten him a interactive toy that he has learned to turn on and play with whenever he wants. He loves it and plays with it all the time.

I recently discovered that he loves to watch videos of birds and squirrels. He can sit there for hours and not get bored. I even set up a Google routine to turn these videos on for him at 4am so he can watch them when he's hyper.

Water bottle? Nope he doesn't care.

Hissing at him, has mixed results, but he comes back 5 minutes later.

Locking him out of the room? He will sit at the door meowing. If I don't lock him out of the room when I leave he will bite my girlfriend while she's asleep.

He is only like that between 4am and 8am. After 8am he goes to sleep. I guess being an ass hole is hard work. When I get up to get ready for work he's completely fine and won't make a peep. He just hates us sleeping when he decides we should be up.

I know he's bored, and we eventually want to get a friend for him, but we're not there yet. Does anyone have any tips that can help?

P.S. I know I insult him a lot in this post, but I do love the little shit. We took him in because her dad was being a dick to him and for the first time since he came into our lives he's actually accepting attention from people.