Best money my wife and I have ever spent to train the cat to stay away from Christmas trees, off tables & counters, etc.
The refills are expensive though, so we just buy compressed air (like for blowing out computers). You pop off the top and the scat top fits beautifully and works like a charm! Good luck!
The only thing that worked for us was traumatizing our poor little kitty. She was just a wee kitty. Only a couple of months old. We put the tree up on Saturday and she kept climbing it. We kept taking her out.
Monday morning rolls around and I take her out of the tree one last time and explain to her (yes, I know cats can’t speak english) that I am going to work and if she climbs the tree again, she might get stuck there because there is no one there.
Ten hours later I come home to this little, pathetic ‘meow, meow’ noise coming from the tree. It was my poor, little kitty. I don’t know how long she was stuck there but she ran straight for the kitty litter.
She has never touched the christmas tree since. She also trained our newer cat not to go near it.
Electrify it?
Really? “Roxxy”? Why the double X’s?
I dunno, just wondering…
Why is this?
shrugs Cuz cats is weird. With the foil lightly scrunched, any weight on it will cause it to buckle and make scary noises.
It’s scary enough that my cat hasn’t even tried to step on it, and it’s keeping her away from a tinsel tree, the tastiest and most delectable of all delicacies.
Every cat I’ve ever had LOVES the sound of foil.
As for your question, Dio, if you figure it out, let me know. Because this is the second year for Annie and Luci, and we still can’t keep them out.
You could try completely soaking the tree with dog urine. Also load up the inside of the tree with dog poops from top to bottom. If you have enough colorful ornaments, it would blend in and not be noticeable. Cats don’t like dog excrement, so along with all of the urine, it would make the overall experience of being in the tree unpleasant for the cat.
Then vomit all over the presents. I hear cats don’t like vomit.
Snerk.
In fact I’ve found that my cats think vomit is very interesting. The couple of times I’ve been sick enough to vomit they are sitting right there, trying to cram their head in the toilet with me. Then when I get mad at them they make chirpy sounds as though they are saying, “Hey, whatcha doing mom? Why are you face down in the petting chair? Does it smell neat in there? I want to smell!”
I would avoid this as a cat deterent.
For every solution, there is a cat that will thwart it. I hang nonbreakable things (like bells) on the bottom limbs because one of my cats likes to bat the ornaments off the tree and roll them around the room. Especially things that make noise.
Also, the foil? My other cat loves it. She also likes plastic.
But, some years ago, a xmas tree mysteriously fell over in the middle of the night. Ka-SMASH. A certain cat has not climbed one since. Not an indoor, xmas, or any other tree, including the ones outside.
I apologize for participating in this thread only to post an LOL, but I seriously laughed so hard at this post that I could not even speak.
Carry on.
Hmmm. Let me ask my cat.
We bought one of these for ~$6.00 and it seemed to do the trick.
I keed.
Most of us call it “spayed”, but I don’t think that’s going to solve your problem.
I think I know this one: pick it up and…no, wait. Wrong joke.
Wrap the trunk and major branches in tinfoil. Cats hate that stuff, and they really, really hate pushing their claws through it.
that’s what she said
My dad tried cat repellent on the tree skirt. It didn’t work so well. The cat took to taking running leaps at the tree rather than step on the skirt.
In dad’s case, the only thing that works is keeping the cat out of the room with the tree. But dad never remembers to close doors, so that really doesn’t work much either. So dad has a tree that ejects ornaments.
When you find out, tell me. We have this problem and have given up. My parents have 2 cats, one of whom usually doesn’t climb things because her back legs are kind of weak. But we learned that this does not apply to trees: her front paws are very strong and up she goes! We are constantly finding her sitting in the branches near the top. My parents tried spraying her with water, which she hates, but they can’t watch her all the time. So they’re giving up. They’re just buying a tree this year, putting nothing on it, and letting her go to town. She doesn’t weigh much, so I doubt it’ll fall.
I will say, she’s cute as hell in that tree.
I hate to thwart the tinfoil proponents but twice recently I threw away balled up used foil only to have my kitten get in the garbage and chew it up. It makes my teeth hurt thinking about it.
As for the tree, you could try hanging it upside diwn from the ceiling, tell the kids that you can put more presents under it that way.
Our cats would climb and sit in the artificial. They bent the branches so badly iy looked like Charlie Brown’s tree. We threw it away and bought a real tree, and they left it alone. We like real better anyway, so we’ve just continued buying a real tree even though the kitties have since died. Natural causes if you’re wondering.
