Thoroughly maddening Millie!

I'm feeling rather sleep deprived. Millie, my lovely, beautiful cat, turns into a monster at night. We used to let her wander the flat at night except for our bedroom (hubby doesn't want her sleeping on the bed as we'd wake up with a face full of fur) but a couple of weeks ago she started scratching on our door at about 2am and 5am. And she was persistent too. We'd try ignoring her, shooing her off, throwing socks at the door, but nothing stopped her. So after reading some advice on a cat chat forum, we started shutting her in the living room at night.

The night before last was OK, she scratched for about fifteen minutes but it wasn't too loud and we managed to ignore her, and so eventually she gave up. But last night she was being so persistent hubby went to try stopping her. Big mistake, that only made her worse. He put cardboard up against the door to try and deter her from scratching but it didn't work. She started scratching everything - the door, the sofa, even the floor. The third time she woke us up I relented and let her in our room, hoping she'd just curl up and go to sleep. No such luck. She wandered around on the bed, licking any bit of human skin she could find, at one point standing very heavily on my chest. In the end hubby had to go feed her and she happily trotted off to the spare room for a nap. In the meantime, we're shattered.

We really don't know what to do. We need a proper night's sleep, and we also need her to get used to some rooms being out of bounds at night - in the next few years we may well have a less furry dependant to worry about, and I don't want Millie wandering in and out of the nursery at night. We've now attached a trellice (sp?) to the living room door to try to stop her scratching, but if that doesn't work, goodness knows what will!