A few months ago I was driving down the street and I saw a little cat run across the road, almost getting hit by a car. I chased after him and caught him, and took him home. After checking with the local animal shelter, newspaper and Craigslist to see if he belonged to anyone, I figured he was a stray cat so I adopted him. His name is George. He is a “tuxedo” cat with a nearly perfect black and white tuxedo coat. When I first found him, he was underfed and skinny, but now he is quite plump. I think he’s about a year old, and he has already been neutered. We have a catch, neuter and release program for stray cats around here, maybe that’s how it happened, or maybe he was someone’s pet and was abandoned.
Anyway, George is a pretty good cat, but has a lot of energy and does some annoying things. For one, sometimes when I’ve closed the door to my room, he scratches at it, and at the carpet at the edges of the door. George has done a real number on that damn carpet, shredding some areas of it to pieces (I don’t know how I’m going to fix it.) I put a “scat mat” outside the door - a plastic mat laced with wires and hooked to a battery, which gives him an electric shock when he steps on it. But he is undeterred. He keeps scratching the carpet around the mat.
I tried spraying him with a water bottle whenever I heard the scratching. I’ll squirt him right in the face with the bottle, he’ll meow and run away, I’ll close the door, and then two seconds later he’ll be back, scratching.
I sprayed “cat and kitten repellent” all over the carpet, the door and the area around there. It is supposed to keep the cat away. It doesn’t. Not even remotely. George continues to sit outside the door, scratching and meowing, even if the area has been sprayed by the repellent.
Of course, I’ve tried just letting him in, but he often leaps right up onto my desk when I’m at my computer, so there are times when I prefer to not have him in the room. And, let’s face it, sometimes my girlfriend and I just want to be “alone” in there, with no cat.
He is full of energy. At night you can hear him running back and forth across the apartment at breakneck speed. If I’ve been in my room for a while and George has been sitting somewhere outside, in the hall or the living room, and I open the door loudly and surprise him, he’ll arch his back and run around with his back arched, in a very silly-looking “alert mode” or something, before returning to his normal posture. I bought him a scratching post but he never uses it; I get him toys, like a squeaking mouse and a ball with a bell inside, but they only keep his attention for a few days.
When he gets bored, it’s back to meow, scratch, meow, scratch, meow, meow, scratch, scratch.
Advice? Pretty please?
