I’ll second the premium cat food - I feed Iams Multiple Cat formula to my 8 cats and it makes a BIG difference in the litter box, both in amount and smell of waste.
I saw a gizmo advertised on Animal Planet tonight called the Pet Vac or something like that - it’s basically an attachment for your vacumn cleaner that has a very, very long hose, so the vacumn noise isn’t in the room with the cats. I’m watching the Eukanuba Dog Show while I do cross-stitch tonight (I’m on a smoke break now) so if I see it again I will get the name and post it.
I also use pine pellet stable bedding as cat litter. It’s the same stuff as sold under the name “Feline Pine” but about a third of the price. The odor control is remarkable. If you decide to try it, look for it at a feed and seed - if you buy it bagged as cat litter it is much more expensive.
To get fur off your sofa after vacuuming it, take a slightly damp cloth and wipe it down in the direction of the fabric’s grain. This will pick up more fur. It works good to just wipe it down with slightly damp bare hands, too, but the yuck factor is higher.
Maybe you could build them a really cool cat perch platform up near the ceiling. All the kitties I’ve ever known like to play “Vulture Cat”. Maybe they’d like it so much they wouldn’t sit (and shed) on your furniture so much.
redtail, the little squeegee thing I’m using on my couch really works great. It’d probably even work on corduroy. It’s called a Pet Hair Magnet and I got it at PetSmart.
Okay, so today I’m shopping for a Swiffer, some premium cat food, and some premium litter!
Well, I did get the Swiffer vac at least. It’s working really well to get up the fur. I also got the crystal litter, which I’m phasing in, so far so good, but I’m afraid they’re going to have to finish up these cheap-ass Friskies before I spring for the Iams.
Don’t write off buying the Iams just yet - I’ve always read that it’s a good idea to phase in the new food gradually when you’re switching cat food. So, when your Friskies is about half gone, go buy a bag of the Iams, and start gradually introducing it and reducing the Friskies to change the cats over. Apparently the gradual switch is less stressful for their tummies, and might help you stave off kitty gastronomical distress. Which really, is just good for everyone.
I second all of this. Duct tape also works very well for removing fur from fabrics with nap. It’s a bit stronger than one of those adhesive lint rollers, so you want to test it on a hidden spot on the fabric to make sure it doesn’t take the nap away with the fur.
My cat was given a little two-level cat castle when he was a kitten. (We called it The Cat Cave and sang him The Batman theme whenever he went into it, because we’re dorks.) He’s too big for it now, but he still loves to sit on top of it and hide his toys inside of it. His favorite spot in the house, though, is on top of the six-foot tall bookshelves in the living room. My parents are building a new house this summer, and they’re planning on building him a cat corner or maybe a catwalk around the top of one of the rooms. He’s much, much calmer when he has access to high places. I think it feeds his feeling of superiority. My sister’s cats have a floor-to-ceiling cat tower, and they definitely spend less time on the furniture now than they did before the cat tower. They use it instead of the furniture to scratch, too.
I second switching food gradually. I’d recommend buying a smaller bag of Iams and mixing it with what you’ve got left. We also use Iams, but sometimes we mix it (sometimes being when we’re short on cash). We don’t mix it with a really cheap brand, but more middle of the road, like Purina Cat Chow. Those big buckets that you can buy kitty litter in work perfectly for mixing food. It should be cleaned first, of course. Not that I’ve never seen a cat eat kitty litter either, but I digress. We buy a bag of each kind of food, dump it into the big bucket, which has a snap-close lid, and then shake shake shake. We keep it under the sink and it’s easy to just dip the food bowls in there. Glad to hear you got the Swiffer. We love ours.
I’ll chime in for support of premium food too. It makes a huge difference.
As for shedding, we use something called Lo-Shed (available from your vet) on Pixel because he has dry skin. But it’s supposed to help reduce shedding, so it might be worth a try. It’s a spray, so I usually put some on my hands and pet him to get it onto his fur.
Do your kitties have a cat tree? It’s a bit of an investment, but it’s a good way to keep them occupied if you put it by a window. Also, playing with them in the evenings is a good way to wear them out a bit before bedtime.
My cat will come when called nearly all the time, but if there is a big dog around or someone she dislikes might be able to catch her if she comes, she won’t do it. I think if I wanted her to come when called in the face of a aggressive dog I’d need a lot better reward than a head scratch and piece of kibble or a punishment worse than what she thinks the dog will do to her.
My kitty comes when you call his name, and looks ashamed when you scold him, but I don’t know that we’ve trained him. He sometimes gets down when you tell him to and he backs down when we tell him to “cool it off,” but I’m not sure if it’s the words so much as the tone. A lot of it depends on the circumstances. He usually misbehaves when either when he feels we aren’t paying enough attention to him or because there are strangers in the house, which really isn’t misbehavior at all, but we’d like him to be friendly.
Like Kalhoun’s cat, he thinks we’re playing with him when we squirt him with a spraybottle and is unfazed by a can full of pennies. We didn’t want to associate the vaccuum with punishment, so the only punishment we have for him is being locked in his timeout room, which is also my bedroom. He doesn’t like cat treats or anything much other than his cat food and vanilla pudding, so it’s hard to reward him for good behavior. The timeouts work really well for punishing him when he misbehaves or gets too rough for company.
We successfully trained our cat to stay off certain areas, like the coffee table and on top of the entertainment center. The thing about training cats though, they are not going to do something because it’s what you want, they’ve got to be under the impression it’s their own idea.
If you want them to stay off the table then being up on the table has got to be a bad experience for them. If you just use a water bottle they will learn to stay off the table only when you’re there and the water bottle is in reach. What worked for my cat:
We covered the table with a couple dozen pieces of scotch tape, sticky side up. At no point did we try to control the cat’s behavior, but after a couple (quite hilarious) attempts to jump up there he started to think it wasn’t the best place to lounge. It only took about a week of replacing the tape for him to get the idea. It’s been about 6 months now and while he will sometimes eye the table warily, he’s found other areas to lounge.
The tape trick has also worked to keep him from scratching the sides of the couch. Two big loops of packing tape in the areas he likes to paw most did the trick.
For the area of the carpet he likes to scratch, the tape kept flipping over so we tried a couple loops of tape coupled with some pepper. He has avoided it for a couple weeks now so I think it’s working.
Of course, when you make a certain area unattractive, you’ve got to offer an alternative. If you’re taking away the places they normally scratch, make sure you have an appropriate place where they are allowed to scratch and make it as attractive to use as possible. Catnip, some fun toys, positive reinforcement when they use it (getting a good pet or scratch), etc.
Dung Beetle, I’ve heard good things on the SDMB about a self raking litterbox, the LitterMaid. I haven’t tried it myself but it seems like an interesting concept.
Ours respond (sometimes) to their names and to things like “no” and “get down.” Roger (who now pines for fjords ) also understood “go on.”
Pixel has a bad habit of scratching on doors, so we’re using a trick our vet recommended to break that habit. We have the vacuum set up in the hallway and have an extension cord plugged in wherever we are in the house. Anytime he scratches on a door, we plug the vacuum into the extension cord so he gets roared at. That way he doesn’t associate the negative response with us, but it still trains him to stop scratching. So far so good.
) also understood “go on.”