My cat cannot climb. He runs, he jumps, he fights with his sister like there’s no tomorrow, but he cannot climb. He has a very unique body shape–he looks like a giant white pear. I figure that this bottom-heavy shape is what makes it nearly impossible for him to climb up his cat tree. Is there anything I can do to help him reach the top level of his cat tree like I know he wants to do (other than just putting him up there)?
Go a few rounds in the ring…
Feed him less food.
Tie little weights to its feet then make it really work for its dinner. Dont put the food on the ground- put it on progressivly higher ledges that it must struggle to reach. Or you could get it a chest expander. Or steroids.
I had a similar problem with my cat. The trick is to exercise her by holding her hind legs and walking her around the house like a wheelbarrow for fifteen minutes each day. After three or four months it will work wonders on her upper body strength, climbing ability, and self-esteem!
I guess as an alternative to the wheelbarrow, you can get a small cart or wheel chair and put her hind legs on it, forcing her to walk on her fore legs. It would look kind of funny, but you don’t have to spend time actually walking her about…
Could you put a ramp up the tree? You could start at 45[sup]o[/sup] and gradually increase the steepness as he gets stronger. I don’t know if a cat would go up a ramp though.
I had a similar problem with my cat. What we did was have the cat’s back legs surgically removed. Then the cat was forced to use its fore legs and thus built up more strength. After we felt she was strong enough, we took her back legs out of the freezer and reattached them. Our problems were solved!
Oh my God that’s a funny suggestion.
–Tim
Not to endorse NeoDeftones’ suggestion, but one of our cats was born with badly deformed, essentially useless rear legs. She walks around balanced on her front paws, and probably has more upper-body strength than I do. This also comes in handy for giving the other mammals a reminder swipe to let them know who’s in charge, when they step out of line.
To REALLY beef up that kitty’s pecs and deltoids, you’ll need to get him into advanced weight training. Buy him a membership in a local gym, and go with him a few times until he gets the hang of it. He should do 5x5 (5 sets of 5 reps) bench press, incline bench press, and military press. After a few months of this, that cat will be strong as hell.
Could you simply find a way to just engage in much more play time, since most cats tend to play or bat with their front legs? Such as the old dangling string bit, and if he grabs hold and allows you to lift him, then reward him.
cackle Now this. This I like. Scary as hell though.
For some reason, I’m picturing Ahnold Schwarzenkitty.
My cat Freckles is a very athletic cat. He’s a tabby/white cross, adopted from the local Humane Society. I attribute his strength to a cat toy he’s fond of. It’s a wooden handle, like you’d find on a file, from which a 27-inch piece of stiff piano wire sprouts. At the end of the wire is a little piece of wood about the size of a cigarette butt. Attached to the wooden stub is a multitude of rubberband pieces. It looks like a bug to the pussycat. He spent hours every day, in his youth, leaping madly after this artificial bait. I wedged the wire toy into the cushion of my chair, and the wire bounced gently in the furnace-breeze.
Freckles is a leaper. He casually jumps from the ground to the top of the neighbor’s fencepost, then up to the roof of the storage shed. From there, he can decide whether to harass the goldfinches in the spruce.
Anyway, I got the toy from a Speck’s Pet store. It didn’t have a trademark on it.
Opus, Caliban’s advice is the best I’ve seen so far. The sentence is not complete, though.** “…and self-esteem!”** It should read “…and your self-esteem!”.
Do not fight Nature, do not improve it. You cat will be able to climb trees. Will he be able to climb down? What if he falls to the ground?
If an animal can’t do something, there is a reason. Are you sure that he can do everything else normal cats do? I do not mean to catch mice even, but simple things?
Does your cat tree have multiple levels? One of my cats is very fat, and doesn’t climb well. But he can jump to the first level of the cat tree. The next two levels are closer together, and he’s able to get to the top without using much climbing skill.
If you play with your cat, getting him to jump, he may develop enough skill to get up into the cat tree. I wish you good luck!
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- Hijack: not cat-related.
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- A friend of mine has a German Sheperd and a Great Dane. The (adult) German Sheperd will casually jump the 39-inch fence around the back yard if he isn’t tied up. The (also adult) Great Dane, even though it stands about 6 inches taller at the shoulder, won’t. It won’t even try, even though when it and the Sheperd play fight, the Dane grabs the Sheperd by the collar and drags and tosses it around. It seems that Great Danes don’t have the right kind of muscles to jump high, over tall objects. It will charge up to the fence, halt, and put its front legs over the top, and stick its head way over and bark, but it makes no attempt to actually climb or jump over. And it’s already most of the way over!!! If you walked up behind it and gave it a kick in the @$$, it would fall over the fence; that’s how big it is.
-I was pretty surprised to see it—I’d have guessed that any dog four feet high could jump a 3.5 foot fence, but it seems not to be so. - MC
MC, it’s possible that your Dane could jump the fence, but chooses not to. It might well know that that’s the boundary of its territory, and so doesn’t even try to leave. For a well-trained dog, a fence three inches high would be enough. With my first dog (rest his soul), by the time he was about six or so, the fenceposts alone were enough to contain him in the yard, and he stopped short of my sister’s room (toenails exactly on the line), where he wasn’t allowed, based just on a change in the grain of the floorboards there.
My aunt and uncle’s dog WOULD NOT go upstairs. If you tried to carry him upstairs, he’d jump out of your arms. My friend’s dog will not leave the linoleum floors in the house. No amount of calling and whistling and floor patting will make her leave the linoleum. She know’s she’s not allowed.
If you set a clear boundary when they’re young, they will not cross it.
–Tim