My cat has been attacking the caulking in this place. A couple different places in both kitchen and my bathroom. Since I’m renting, I’m going to have to renew that caulking. I’ve never caulked anything, but I don’t think it’s that hard to do.
My question is, is it likely that Gina (my cat) will be thwarted by fresh caulking or will she destroy any new caulking too? This place is maybe 40 or 50 years old and has obviously never been remodeled. Which I’m sure makes it easier for her to attack the caulking.
Fresh caulking may have a smell she finds unpleasant and will stick to the surface much better than older, dried out caulking. You should be good, unless of course she sees it as a challenge. Hard to judge what a cat will actually.
I don’t know if she’s actually ingesting any of it. Or at least large chunks of it. She mainly plays with the larger pieces and leaves a bunch of small pieces behind.
Depending on what the state of the caulk is, she might have initially gotten interested in playing with a loose end and then discovered the joys of pulling more of it loose. If that’s the case, or if there’s mildew under it, stripping out the old caulk and laying down new might help. At the very least, new caulk should be more firmly attached. (If it’s in bad shape, it should also be up to your landlord to fix it, but I suppose you live in the real world.)
Cats, man! You never know what they’ll decide to do next.
If you squish the caulk down when you do the repairs - which is how it’s supposed to be done anyway - so that it’s flush with the surrounding material, she may not be able to get at it as easily. You might consider getting some bitter apple spray on it, just in case it might deter your cat. (I tried it on a pre-lit artificial tree and my cats were undeterred, but hope springs eternal, etc.)
You can use fresh caulk to solve this. Put the cat in a sturdy box. Use caulk to seal the box. Problem solved!
More seriously, I suppose it’s possible that it’s the smell of the caulk she finds attractive, although it doesn’t seem likely if it’s 40-50 years old. In that case, putting down fresh caulk will make the problem worse. You may want to expose her to the fresh caulk before you lay it down and see how she reacts. I learned the hard way that my rats think that latex gloves smell delicious.
Currently I’m smearing habanero sauce on the sections that she’s attacked but not destroyed yet. It seems to deter her, but then she finds somewhere else I hadn’t thought of to attack.
Since you’re renting …
Let her go ahead and have fun in attacking the caulking.
Just plan on re-calking when you move out.
You’ll probably have to completely scrape out the areas she has de-caulked to re-caulk them. And possibly the whole length of the caulking, since the new caulk will be an obviously different color. Maybe make a point of that – tell the landlord that you replaced much of the old, dried-out caulk – but you’re not charging him for that work, if he’ll just cover the cost of the caulk.
I am sure this has much more to do with a challenge / game, and texture / material behaviour than it does with taste. Years ago I kept on finding bright, intensely blue poop in the cat litter. Turns out they found my camping gear and were eating the blue foam sleeping pad. Assuming any ones remembers those, this was the early 90’s and they were already 80’s relics by then.
Where is this caulking? Caulk is a pretty big category of products with various applications from weather or waterproofing to cosmetic. Nothing food grade. Inside a finished home all I can think of is Silicone in the bathroom for sealing joints or paintable acrylic for baseboard and casing. Silicone caulk is definitely unhealthy to consume, but I doubt the acrylic is exactly health food. Acrylic is certainly much much easier to work with and and likely much less interesting to play with for a cat.
The caulk is along the base of the bathtub, around two sinks (bath and kitchen) and below the sliding glass door to the deck. I don’t think she’s eating any of it. AFAICT, she just wants the larger chunks to play with. I find those all over the house. She leaves a fair amount of mess made up of small bits.
I’m preparing to redo it. I’ve bought a tube of caulk and a caulk gun. I’ve removed the leftover caulk from the base of the tub, and found a video online about how to apply caulk. Haven’t opened the tube yet. Probably try tomorrow.
Less is more.
Plenty of old rags or paper towel to clean up mess and sticky hands.
Clean clean surface to work with.
A quick wipe with a damp rag first will help things slide and help remove the caulk from where it dont belong.
Push the caulk into place rather than drag it.
A pass with a cheap caulking tool after application does wonders, but a wet finger works pretty good too.
And…less is more.
Cats seem to have this thing about petroleum products. Rubber bands, cling wrap, duct tape, milk jug rings, pull-tabs, foam insulation, you name it. They think these things are for them to chew up and play with. I wouldn’t have guessed caulk, but if it’s old and dry and breaking apart in chunks, then it’s time to replace it anyway.
Actually, it wasn’t that bad. She had to work pretty hard to get it to come free. I think she found one place (corner of the bathtub) that had an excess and that was easy. After that, she had the idea and lots of persistence.