I have 3 cats. The first 2, acquired as kittens, I got within a couple of months of each other, so I expected some behavioral modification would be necessary to keep them from jumping on counters, clawing furniture, etc. They responded well to being squirted with squirt guns, and stopped doing most of the things I frowned upon (although they still continued to claw at the furniture a bit). But, if I caught them being bad and gave a firm No! they immediately ceased, desisted, and got the hell out of Dodge.
Then I added a new kitten about a year later. She, of course, needed training as well, and she’s getting better. The problem is a sort of regression on the part of my first cat. He’s taken to climbing on the top of the kitchen cabinets, something that he NEVER did until Molly came along. And the worst part is that he won’t get down when I yell. He won’t get down when the water starts squirting at him. He won’t even get down when I stick a broom up there to swat at him. He has become, not only a bad cat, but a stubborn one.
What do I do? I’m sick of dragging the stool out to retrieve a very bad cat. And I don’t want him to hate me anymore.
Do you have a herding dog handy?
We have a cat who liked to sit on the middle of the dining room table. We would tell him to get down. He would look at us with a look that plainly said, “I know you’re too lazy to come make me get down.” We would squirt him with water pistols. He said, “Would you mind? You’re interfering with my sitting on the table. 'Kthanxbye.”
We taught the dog the command “Tell Kitty to get down.” The dog would run over to the table and forcibly drag the cat off the table by his neck. Now all we have to do is call the dog when the cat is misbehaving. He gets this “Oh crap! The dog is coming!” look on his face and ceases whatever he is doing.
My point is, if you let them get away with anything, they will quickly learn that they *can * get away with it. You’ve got to consistently enforce (or get a dog who will). Since your case is a little more difficult to enforce, I can tell you that a friend of mine had luck getting their cats to stay off the counters. They lined them with tape, sticky side up. The cat jumped up, the tape stuck to the cat. The cat was not amused. It only took a few repetitions before the cat quit jumping up there. As an added bonus, the cat hates the tape, not you. I’ve also seen mats with little rubber points on them, designed for teaching pets to stay off furniture, but I don’t know anyone who has tried them.
Eh, your “bad kitty” may simply need a place for himself that is out of the way of other cats. My boy kitty, Rex, always has 1-2 spots in any house we live in where he goes to be apart from me and his sister. They are almost always “up high” perches, like on top of cabinets.
They are quite large so I have to keep reminding myself that they ARE still kittens (9 months old). They’ve discovered the countertops, the dining room table, the buffet, any flat horizontal surface with any elevation is fair game to them.
The thing is they DO respond when I holler or use a can of compressed air. But I know they get on the counter top when I’m not home because I see kitty paw prints from bad big kittens.
I have a stove with two ovens, a large one below and a smaller one on top. Eddie will climb the stove like it’s Mt. Everest and HANG from the top oven’s bar and look around as if to decide whether or not he wants to continue climbing up to the counter. His brother Wally can’t be bothered with climbing, he just jumps up to scope things out.
They did that yesterday as I was IN the kitchen working AT the counter top. BRAZEN.
I can’t hang stockings at the fireplace because they jump and bite the stockings and would probably end up pulling the stocking holders from the mantel, and braining themselves in the process. Since our house is on the market, we don’t have a Christmas tree up–good thing, otherwise I’m sure I’d come home every day to it in ruins on the floor.
My other cat isn’t like this. She’s the very picture of a calm, slightly timid cat. The most she’ll do is scuttle around the house like a timid raccoon. The bad kittens, on the other hand, delight in zooming around the house like out of control pin balls, careening off walls, furniture, me, the other cat–they don’t care. It’s pretty comical when they wipe out though, and go skidding across the wood floors on their claws.
I sure hope they calm down by this time next year. I’d like to have a Christmas tree again.
edited to add: rubber mats with pointy bits? Tell me more!
I would recommend putting something up on top of those cabinets so there is no room for kitty. Cardboard boxes would be cheap, or you could get decorative with something - pottery, books, etc. Really fill up the space, so it doesn’t just turn into stuff for him to knock down.
Also, find a way to give him some other elevated hiding place that he would enjoy. You can get tall kitty condos (can be a little pricey, but very cool) or maybe clear out part of a closet shelf and put down a blanket.
Once the cat is up there, I think I understand why he is not responding to squirted water. Essentially, he’s just getting backed into a corner by it. He would need to jump toward the threat (you) to get away from it, and kitty minds sometimes don’t work that way.
Yeah, he really likes to knock stuff down. I had to throw out a bunch of broken dishes yesterday that he knocked over while trying to get to the window over the sink.
Hmmm… now that my ex has gotten his stuff, I have more room in the hall closet and I could reorganize it. I had eliminated their other “high place” because it happened to be where I kept my sheets and towels, and drying off with cat hair is, um, icky.
I don’t really care if he wants somewhere to be alone, or that it needs to be up high, just that it’s away from my dishes and towels, you know?
Here it is. There’s also a static discharge one called a scat mat, but I don’t like the idea of electrocuting the poor dears. Irritating them is enough for me.
My blood pressure stays a lot lower if I don’t care about all the naughty shit my kitty-roommates do.
Like yesterday, one of them grabbed a pair of my dirty underpants out of my laundry basket, carried it to the litterbox, and buried it. What were they trying to say–“these smell”–? I had to pick them out and take them outside to shake off the litter before washing them. I’m sure my neighbor who sits on his porch drinking coffee was wondering why I was shaking a pair of my underpants at him.
And nothing I have done so far has managed to keep cat hair out of my food, so I’ve given up trying.
My hope is that I will one day figure out how to turn cat hair and cat poop into biodiesel, so I can retire a gajillionaire.
Ha! The question is, how did you know they were in there? Did you see him/her burying your underpants, or were you looking for that particular pair and decided, maybe the cats grabbed them, I’ll go dig in the litter box?
My former cat, Mew, used to love being way up high. The closer she could get to the ceiling, the better. I used to call her Spidercat. In my old condo, we had indirect lighting in the living room. She used to jump up on the arm of a chair, jump up on top of a wall unit that was next to it, and from there, jump up to the ledge of the lighting, then walk all the way across to the center of the room, where she would proceed to dangle herself over the edge, looking like she was about to jump on top of you where you sat on the couch, but she never did. That is until one day when our housekeeper claims the cat scared the shit out of her by jumping onto her back while she was vacuuming. OMG I wish I could’ve seen that.
Here’s another vote for just leaving the cat alone to get up there and relax. If you’re worried about clean counters, just get into the habit of wiping them down with a soapy sponge before doing any food prep.
I’ll have to find some of the pictures tonight and scan them tomorrow.
I was discussing this with a friend yesterday…I mean, how the hell does cat hair wind up in the goddam ice cube tray!?!?
Cat hair is trans-dimensional by nature. It’s everywhere. Don’t fight it, you’ll lose.
To the OP: My cat Marbles gets on top of our cabinets, too. Discovering the danger of breaking things while trying to get him down didn’t take long, and we figured that if he’s going to be laying around in the kitchen, at least he isn’t underfoot. So we left well enough alone. He liked the privacy, he liked the view, and he looked really cute up there. Since your kitty is so cute, I think you should let him get away with it.
Oh my gosh, now the people sitting near me at work think not only am I a dirty consultant but I laugh out loud for no reason at all!
I agree with you that my kitties keep me sane and calmer.
With our house on the market, my husband in Boston and me here doing a long distance job search while still working etc etc, well even when I have to holler at my big bad kittens, I am still so glad they are here. When all three kitties form a kitty pile on me in the middle of the night, and they are warm and all purry, I feel better even though my husband isn’t with me.
Although not all animals mind them. We had a small spaniel who used to get into out of the way places. Once we heard her making a strange clacking sound. Turns out she’d triggered a mousetrap, it stuck to her rear end and she was blithely dragging it along, making clacking noises.
In my old condo, we had indirect lighting in the living room. She used to jump up on the arm of a chair, jump up on top of a wall unit that was next to it, and from there, jump up to the ledge of the lighting, then walk all the way across to the center of the room, where she would proceed to dangle herself over the edge, looking like she was about to jump on top of you where you sat on the couch, but she never did. That is until one day when our housekeeper claims the cat scared the shit out of her by jumping onto her back while she was vacuuming. OMG I wish I could’ve seen that.