Shirley, this sounds like you will have more of an issue with Mr. Ujest than with the cats. If you think it would help having him talk to some of us so he can see that a guy can be a manly man and a cat lover. There’s no rule that says you can’t play “head butt game” with a fuzzy widdle boo-boo kitty and be a life member of the NRA. (Note: I do not use cats as targes) Have him read George Carlin’s Napalm and Silly Putty where he has a chapter on how cats are not dogs and why he likes cats. He needs to get in touchwith his feline side and we are here to help.
You may be speaking lightly, but it’s probably true. An ex-girlfriend’s father was a forrester and ranger in the White Mountain Natl. Forest, and among his many duties was animal rescue (usually to help critters that had run-ins with cars or were the victims of poachers). He had the opportunity to get up-close and personal with a few bobcats and one lynx (quite a rarity even in norther New England), and according to him, even an injured bobcat (which is usually no bigger than two Maine Coon Cats put together) will kick a grown man’s ass if it’s got some fight in it.
Every once in a while, you hear some old timer who was up in the Oxford Co. hills swear up and down he saw a mountain lion. Meanwhile, most zoologists in the area will tell you there is no viable population of mountain lion in the Northeast. Chances are, they’re both right: The mountain lion was probably an escaped pet, the owner of which was unlikely to have reported the loss due to the illigality of owning such a creature, under the majority of circumstances. All I can say is anyone who attempts to raise a great cat on his or her own is out of their freaking mind. The thing probably ripped its “masters” arm off before escaping into the woods to feed the folklore that mountain lion have returned to NH and ME.
Hmm, I never really noticed cats need much training at all. When I get a kitten, I just place it in the litterbox every hour or so until it gets the idea. Cats really do prefer clean litterboxes over other places and will instintually go there. There’s not really much else to it.
I also never, ever feed my cats table scraps and don’t let them up on counters. Usually, yelling at them to get down works. That way they don’t associate human food with something they want and they don’t beg. ('course, it probably helps that I’m a veg so they don’t want my food much anyway, but they don’t even beg for my occasional tuna)
Would Tony LaRussa do? He has nine cats, and also founded the no-kill shelter where we got the Neville kitties, who are The Two Bestest Cats In The Whole World 
Pro-- soft, warm, funny little goofballs. Con-- I have to watch out I don’t start speaking to them in a high pitched cutesy voice.
Museum Wax is great stuff for sticking your knick-knacks to the mantle so that kitty can’t knock stuff off. It’s completely removable, but it’s waxy so it might take a bit of elbow grease.
My two current monsters looove their kitty climbing thing but hate the napping part. The last cat I had couldn’t have cared less for the climber but you’d have taken his napper over his dead furry body. You can make either fairly easily with carpet remnants and cardboard concrete forms and a few scraps of plywood and 2x4. If they don’t like one it’s off to the Humane Society for the homeless kitties to enjoy.
Do try them, they’re great for your furniture if you can focus their scratching in appropriate places, like the kitty condo. Plus, I believe it helps a bit that I clip their claws and I spritzed them with a water bottle, even when they were small, whenever they even thought about clawing anything.
As to the litter box; you can try potty training them. There are kits you can buy, but there are several websites that can walk you through the process and there’s even a Yahoo mail group on the subject. It took a while, but I managed with only two minor rebellions.
Cats are macho.
Our dogs are pets. We’re the alphas and they’re part of the pack. Our cats are more like roommates. If they decided we weren’t their cup o’ tea, they’d take up somewhere else and to hell with us. In fact, I’ve known cats (not mine) that have done just that.
Btw, a squirt gun is your friend. Hit a cat with a harmless stream of water when it does wrong, and it’ll learn pretty quick. Put a touch of vinegar in the water and it’ll learn even quicker.
Heh. I speak lightly, and I speak truth. Many times when the cat is sitting on the floor, looking up at me, clearly wondering why the lap hasn’t appeared yet, I reflect: “It’s a little animal. A completely independent creature, not a human, living in my house. And if he decided to jump me, not just punish me with a snotty swipe and run away but really try to take a piece out of me, I’d be in serious trouble.” 
(+)If you get tired of the cat, you can eat it.
(-)They are high in cholesterol.
Scratching the furniture isn’t necessarily a given with cats. I’ve got four currently and not a one touches the furniture. I make sure they have a suitable scratching post from day one, give them lots of praise for using it and have no trouble. It’s even possible to retrain a cat that’s already used to scratching upholstery, I did it once when I inherited a kitty, but it does take a lot of patience. For any kind of cat training you need patience, persistence, and positive reinforcement. And as someone already mentioned cats are wedded to routine. They hate change so be careful when you’re establishing patterns early on.
Also, a lot is going to depend on how a kitten was raised, whether or not it was socialized well. A stray that grows up outdoors is going to be more reserved than a kitten handled from birth. Play with any kitty you’re considering to get a feel for how friendly it is. And when you do get a cat gradually get it used to your handling its feet, ears, etc. by gently petting said areas every day. That really pays off when you have to clip claws, dose it for ear mites, or otherwise handle kitty in the future.
Sorry to ramble so much. I’ll just finish by saying that my cats have been a major pain at times (like any living creature I guess) but I wouldn’t trade my time with them for any amount of money.
This is great!
Now, a question that I forgot to ask:
How many of you have pure breed cats or the Free/Pound/Rescue/Mutt Kitty
All mutts.
All but one of our cats was a reject for some reason or another, whether temperament or injury or ailment. The one non-reject found me after she was severely abused.
What can I say? We like the hard cases. 
Please get Humane Society cats or the equiv. There are so many strays and foundlings, it’s a real shame to prop up the breeders. Cats are cool as-is. Why luxurize them?
The Neville kitties are moggies (mutts). One of them is a Siamese mix, but clearly is not a purebred Siamese. The other looks quite a bit like a purebred Russian Blue, but since we have no idea of her ancestry, she’s officially a domestic shorthair. I usually describe her as a Russian Blue mix.
I recommend Petfinder.com for finding a kitty, or Siamese Rescue if you’re looking for a Siamese or Siamese mix. If you were in the SF Bay Area, I’d recommend ARF, where we got our kitties.
Oh, one more thing-
You should think about whether you want a little tiny kitten or an adult. Kittens are very cute, but they can be harder to deal with than adult cats. The Neville kitties were about 8 months and 5.5 months when we got them. The younger one still looked a little like a kitten, but the older one looked pretty much full-grown. They get into stuff, but they’ve never climbed the curtains or done anything really destructive.
One of them came up and wanted to help me post this. She says “562”. Could some Doper better than me at understanding cat language decode this for me?
That one’s easy. It means “Feed the cat.”
You’ll find that all three-digit combinations mean the same thing.
I’ve grown up with cats, and most of them have been very long-lived, so despite my 40-some years, I have only lived with seven cats.
My experience is that having an indoor/outdoor cat is not a guarantee that they don’t need/won’t use a litter box. We had one cat who would actually ask to be let in, use her box, then ask to go back out again.
In my experience, indoor cats cost a lot less in the long run. If a cat is 100% indoors, they will not catch feline diseases from other cats in the neighborhood. That means that you don’t have to worry about Feline Leukemia, or scratches from cat fights. (We had one cat die a lingering death from Feline Leukemia, and it wasn’t pretty. She should have been put down months before my mother actually got the courage to do it.)
The first cat that I owned as an adult was an indoor cat who like supervised visits to the back yard, but who had no desire to go any farther than that, and who hated being outside without one of her People with her. She lived to be almost 20 years old, with VERY few health problems except for her teeth. She did develop Feline Renal Failure at the end, but she had already had such a long and full life that we chose to put her down rather than make her go through months of therapy that she hated.
We now have two strictly indoor cats who are declawed. They are a lot of fun to have around, and can be affectionate at times, too. Maintenance is feeding/watering a couple of times a day, and changing the litter box every couple of days. No walks in the rain, cold, or snow, and our backyard does not smell like a poop pile. (My mother refused to walk her dogs, so our backyard was pretty much dog-only territory when I was growing up.) One of them caught a mouse in the basement (even without claws), and they both do a good job of keeping the moth and cricket population under control. Hairballs can be kept to a minimum with the right diet and occasional doses of hairball medicine, even for long-haired cats. I take them to the vet about once a year for their annual visit and shots.
The one disadvantage is shredded furniture. It’s really hard to get a cat to not scratch furniture, short of declawing them. However, declawing them means that they cannot be outdoor cats at all, since they have no way to defend themselves against other animals.
We’ve never had a pure breed.
My first cat (after leaving home and getting my own apartment) was from a yard sale. They didn’t actually charge us for the cat, though. The owner was having a yard sale in preparation for moving, and put up a sign that a cat was available. DH and I had both talked about getting a cat, so we asked about it. The cat was about 2, and had been rescued as a stray kitten within hours of her tail being cut off by some unknown force. The owner liked her, but the new landlord didn’t allow cats, so they wanted to find a nice home for her. We had that cat for nearly 18 years, and she finally passed away last February.
We now have two cats. One is an adult stray who wandered up to our daughter’s best friend’s house looking for a home. The family is allergic to cats, though, so they called us since they knew we had just lost our old cat. A few days later, we happened across a Humane Society cat at a local pet store, and somehow, the cat came home with us. She was about a year old, and very shy. She had been with a family, but they gave her up with the reason that she was too expensive.
All mutts. The shelter here has so many there isn’t enough room for all the kittens so volunteers foster them at their homes. I’ve been doing that this year and it’s a bunch of work but fun too.
Oh, Anne Neville raises a good point. All kittens go through a destructive phase, no doubt about it. It can wear on your nerves if you’re not prepared for it.
I also forgot to add in my previous post-none of my cats have ever been declawed. I discourage them from using their claws when young-either on the furniture or me. They’ve all been strictly indoor animals too. When I was a kid we had a gorgeous Persian who roamed the neighborhood until he was poisoned by someone. I’m not ever going through that again. Mine were all raised indoors so they’re perfectly happy with a roof over their heads. One of them slipped into the backyard one day when I wasn’t looking but it wasn’t ten minutes before she was anxious to be let back in. It was raining and she didn’t care for that a bit. Cats know where the good life is when they see it.
Spazmodeus is a mutt, though many have speculated he has some Siamese or Abyssinian in him. He’s grey with a white snout, bib, and feet. He’s got very subtle striping, suggesting a largely impenetrant agouti phenotype, like a tabby with only two barely-distiguishable shades of grey. This characteristic makes me strongly suspect he is indeed of Aby lineage, bred with some nondescript American shorthair, probably grey with white splashes like its offspring sitting next to me.
I got him at a pet store in D.C. for ten bucks. It was essentially like getting him from a shelter, since he was being sold in some extra space, sort of on consignment; the owners didn’t deal in mongrels, and were simple doing a friend a favor. When I brought him home, I discovered he had fleas and ear mites. Once that was cleared up, he was fine, and has had no health issues since. I think mutts are the way to go.
Where has this thread been? And why didn’t I see it sooner?
Shirley , mr smartini was absolutely 100% “we will never, ever have a cat.” Adamant. No way. Then when our daughter was about 10 years old she caught me at a very weak moment (actually I was very sick with a cold) while we were visiting my mom and we brought home a stray kitty who had “taken up” at my mom’s house.
Cut to mr_smartini opening the door to me (sick) and daughter (very cute and the apple of his eye) but holding a very scrawny orange tabby. I saw an inner turmoil as he considered slamming the door and locking it. Not much sleep in smartini home that night until I said “I am going to bed now because I am sick. First thing in the morning I will take the kitten back to mom.”
Next morning my daughter and I awoke to find that an old doggie basket had been ferreted out of the attic and fitted with an old sweater for a bed. Cat food had been bought and bowls had miraculously appeared. Still mr_smartini maintained it was only because the said very cute daughter wanted the kitty and it was up to the “two of you” to make sure the cat did not mess up the house, did not ever smell, did not ever scratch the furniture and did not ever get in his lap. Right.
mr_smartini came running into the house about a week or so later announcing that Kat was atop the vintage Model T Ford he maintained as his alumni work for his university. (Yep, can you say Ramblin Wreck?) Now, it is important to note, when the wreck was visiting for some work even I got locked out of the garage. “Oh, I’ll go get him right now and bring him inside!” “Oh, no”, said mr_smartini, “I came to get the camera so I can take a picture of him up there. It’s like he thinks the soft top is a hammock! It’ll be a great picture! Don’t go out there, you might disturb him!”
:eek: Who was this man? And what did he do with my we-will-never-ever-have-a-cat husband?
I guess Kat…named by my husband, “Well, until you two figure out what to call him I’m gonna call him Cat” we just upgraded it to Kat…won him over.
It might not happen that way for you but who knows? I certainly never expected it. My husband is now the world’s biggest cat nut. And they adore him.
Kat is no longer with us. We now have Louie and Lucy. They are indoor/outdoor cats. Louie was a surprise gift to us from out daughter when she left for grad shool and Lucy was another stray who found my mom’s home. Both are mixed, just regular cats but so different. They are very independent and have both been very healthy. Spend most of their time on our front or back porch or in our yard. Sometimes Louie goes over and sleeps on our neighbor’s front walk but that is about it for their straying.
We have also had dogs and loved them very much. Right now we don’t have a dog and I may not be inclined to have dogs again. They require so much more attention. Good luck with whatever you decide! I say go for it!
Everyone needs a dog and a cat. A dog to make him think he is the only person in the world and a cat to remind him that he is not. ~anon