Our cat has an annoying habit of pawing at our bedroom door at dawn (we keep her our because of the hair everywhere). We tried putting down foil on the floor but it doesn’t stop her.
My boyfriend keeps discovering a stray cat sleeping on his motorcycle seat, under the cover. He’s afraid she’s going to scratch the paintwork at some point, or pee on the seat.
Any suggestions as to how we can discourage these felines?
You need The Ssscat Cat Training aid.
Here is a video of it in action. Be sure to turn up the volume. There are a few videos of this thing on youtube.
Can’t help you with the stray, but my cat did the door thing for a while. Until I discovered the evil genius that is a can of spray air, that is.
He hates that shit, and it doesn’t hurt him at all. I shoot a blast under the door when he’s doing his thing, and he doesn’t try it again for a couple of weeks.
You can try this stuff - http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2754438#prodTab1
I’m in the market for the same thing but haven’t tried this yet.
Do you feed him first thing when you get up? They will come to expect (and demand) that, so we try not to feed ours immediately before going to bed or right after getting up.
put some double faced tape on the door where she paws. she won’t like that… 
Ditto on the tape. Cats HATE anything stuck to their paws. This could also work for the stray. A water bottle, sprayed at her feet when she paws the door, could also work.
I’ve also been known to just stomp over to the door, open it, and scream profanities; this has a varying level of effectiveness, but generally it makes me feel much better.
Best solution is to provide her a better place to sleep.
A small box, filled with soft rags. Cats like to be up high, so place it up high (at least as high as the motorcycle seat). But make sure she has an easy way to get up to it. And, especially for a feral cat, a second, alternate way to get down. If you put a small dish in one corner, and occasionally fill it with cat food, she will soon prefer this sleeping location.
And a permanent solution would be to eventually catch her, and find someone to adopt her.
P.S. reassure him: cats don’t like to scratch painted metal surfaces; they prefer rough ones like tree bark or rope scratching posts. She’s only likely to scratch the paint if he yells at her and scares her and she scratches the paint as she runs off. So don’t do that.
And cats prefer to pee on sand or dirt, so they can then dig some up to cover the pee (instinctive behavior: hide your traces).
Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I’ve heard of the hissing thingy before, but I can’t find a place that will deliver to Korea. The double-sided tape thing sounds about right. We’ll definitely have to try that.
The motorcycle is usually stashed under our landlord’s stairs so I dunno if providing another sleeping spot will go down well with him (Koreans hate cats for the most part).
Usually, they want feeding about one hour before their regular feeding time. Do you feed her the moment you get up? If so, change this to it being the last thing you do before you leave the house. I had to endure about two weeks of yowling but now she knows she’s going to get fed when I am packing my bag to leave, and not before, so she no longer bothers scratching at my door at 5.30am.
There’s no way the cat would be able to scratch the paintwork.
Put the bane-of-all-cats-everywhere, the vacuum, just outside your door - with the plug inside.
Every time Kitty starts to scratch, plug the vacuum in.
I can tell you that sssscat! works on my two. At first you have it turned on outside the door and it scares them. After a while, you don’t even have to turn it on, they see the can and they know what it means.
As for the double-sided tape, doesn’t work for me. Like you’re supposed to put it on the corners of the couch so the cats stop scratching? My cats peel it off with their teeth and chew it. If it’s on a hard surface, they scratch at it.
Of course, this only works if you leave the vacuum on.
We had a similar problem with the cat at the bedroom door–they are pretty persistent! We also love our cats a lot and so we wanted to go with something as passive as possible (as opposed to scaring the shit out of them, etc.). We put a baby gate in the doorway in such a way that we could still close the door. She couldn’t get to any area of door below 2’, and evidently trying to scratch the baby gate or through the gate was just not the same thing. Once you break a cat of a habit, they seem to stay broken of it for a very long time, so after about 4 days of failing to be able to get to the door to scratch it, we were able to take the gate down. (If you try this, you do have to remember that it is there if you wander out of the room half-awake…) Obviously this solution is useless if your door opens out.
What has worked for me: keep several somethings relatively soft and chuckable (a balled-up pair of socks, a paperback book, a tennis shoe) next to your bed. When the cat starts scratching, chuck one at the door, hard.
What has worked for a friend: putting foil not on the floor, but on the door, from the bottom up to as high as the cat might scratch.
The Sscat device is working great for us, but I see your problem with getting it overseas. They also sell a electric scat mat that might do the trick - a small electric shock to my feet would discourage ME, never mind the cat! Those should be able to be shipped overseas.
A couple of minutes in the microwave usually does the trick.
Your boyfriend is getting on the cats’ nerves. Send him away.
U haz motorcycle kitty! Adopt him as a riding buddy!
The cat is hungry. Cats usually need to eat twice a day. My cats generally wanted to get fed at 7am and 5pm. If the cat isn’t a big piggy, you can leave some dry kibble out overnight.
Catch the stray. Animal control and/or human societies in your areas will lend you cat traps for a small deposit. After the cat is captured, you should check it for a microchip. It is quite possible that a neighbor’s cat has taken a liking to your house.