Indoor cat wants out very, very badly. HELP!

In My Humble Opinion
1

He’s fixed, very sweet and socialized, and this is his third winter with me (and another boycat) here in this house.

He’s always had some issues with wanting to go out, but lately he’s been driving me insane with constant yowling by the doors and windows. Every time I open the door it’s a huge big deal stomping and yelling to keep him from darting out, which he has managed to do twice in 2 days now – I’ve caught him quickly each time before he’s bolted.

He gets plenty of attention, affection, etc … but when he decides he wants to yell at the front door, it’s very difficult to distract him. I have just lately taken to the squirt-bottle treatment, which works for 30 seconds or so, but I’m afraid I’m going to just make him madder and madder, and he’s going to start destructive behavior. Kitties can be so imaginative when they want to get back at their owner.

Any options here (besides letting him out, of course) – drugs perhaps? (for him, not me.) Anything?

2

If he is not fixed, there may be a lady cat he wants to get to. And the only way you are going to stop him is to stop the hormones.

If he is fixed, then he sounds a lot like my old cat, who just thought that he should go outside, despite our opinion that he was an indoor cat. He had been from a litter of a strays and had spent his formative years outside. He tried to escape and we tried to stop him. I am ashamed to admit how often he outsmarted us. It became a less frequent occurance as he got older–we got more canny, and he got more slow, but he would still dart outside or yowl at windows and doors.

Is it possible that there is prey outside that he is trying to get to?

As for distraction, I used to just say his name in a disapproving voice–which caused him to yowl at me instead of the door. Not a grand improvement, but a little better.

3

I know you said “besides going outside”, but really, what’s the problem? I have an inside/outside cat, she comes and goes, it’s no problem, even in urban areas…

4

Ahh…my neighbors have a great indoor/outdoor cat in an sub-urban area. He likes to shit in everyone’s flower boxes. Keep 'em in or keep 'em in your yard on a leash or run, for heavens sake. I seriously doubt that indoor/outdoor cats ask to be let back in to use the litterbox, and poo doesn’t just evaporate.

To the OP, have you tried using a harness and a lead to let him out supervised? We used to do this is a yowler, and he loved it. He’d go out for a while, eat some grass, sniff some flowers, then come back in. We didn’t have to worry about him running away or being a nusince, and he got his out time. (I say a harness because we had experience with ours slipping his collar)

5

You seriously wouldn’t let your cats out because they poop?

6

Mine does - she doesn’t ever poop outside (dammit), and comes back in to use her litter whenever she feels the call of nature. I live in an urban area too, though I have a fair-sized back yard.

7

I wouldn’t let my cats outside because it’s dangerous, to be frank.

My family got Eleanor as a very little kitten when she followed my sister and father home during a walk. We just weren’t ever able to keep her inside; she’d whine at windows and dart outside, and she’s too crafty a cat to let somebody catch her when she’s got no mind to be caught. Nothing we did stopped the behavior - until I moved away to college and took her with me. As soon as she lived in an apartment she just stopped trying to get outside.

So a change of location might keep your cat from wanting to go outside. Not that it’s something you’d move over, heh. Age does seem to help a little bit - another of my cats, Catherine, was almost as bad as Eleanor when she was young, but at sixteen years old she’s not so keen on it anymore. (She’s senile, though, and will occasionally dart outside, only to hang out in the yard for three minutes and then yeowl to get back in.)

8

Natural fertilizer. Your neighbors should thank you. They would have to pay good money at the garden shop for this, and here they’re getting it free!

It’s called re-CY-cling. :smiley:

9

Um, yeah. That’s exactly what I said. :rolleyes:

10

After losing two cats to cars, and another just disappear with no trace, my cats stay indoors. Not to mention the fleas, fights, poisons…etc that cats can run into, I have made a choice to make my cats indoor only.

I do have experience making a former indoor/outdoor cat indoor only, but my experience was like Cheese Monster’s, I moved into town, a new place, and started training him to be indoor only from there. It was hard, he had a bad habit of sitting on his hauches and scratching vigorously at the door he wanted open. When he did this, I’d go to a different room. He finally figured out that he wasn’t going outside anymore. It took a while, and a lot of patience on my part.

When it got really bad, I would let him into the garage (big door closed) or the basement. Both were safe places, but normally closed off to the cats, so he felt like he was going on an adventure. I took him out on a harness a few times, but that seemed to set off more cravings from him to be outdoors, so I didn’t do it often.

11

We have a let-me-out yowler, too, and this is the worst time of the year for it. There’s just something about the fall weather that makes them want to go out. (She also gets really bad when we have a good snow.) Try a harness and leash, and see if walking him makes it any better; it seems to shut ours up.

Even if the walks don’t help, the good news is that he’ll probably settle down as the weather gets crappier. Kitties don’t generally like to be out when it’s wet and crappy.

12

My cat yowls to be let out, and scratches the door, but when it comes down to it, he’s agoraphobic. On the few occasions (since he was snipped as a kitten, anyway) that I’ve let him oout, he gets no further than the vestibule of my building, and then he panics and runs back inside. He’s terrified of loud or unexpected noises, especially cars.

Last year I had to take him to a friend’s house for the day (they were exterminating in my buidling), and I thought he was going to have a heart attack when I took him out to the car. I had him on a leash, because he wouldn’t be put into his carrier no matter what I did (he used to be fine with it, and he used to love car rides; he’d lie sprawled across the seat and look out the window). He was yowling and hyperventilating and hiding under the rear seats.

Sometimes the poor critters don’t know what they want.

13

Hi,

I have the same problem with one of my cats- I have been thinking about buying this thing I saw in one of the pet catalogs (I think you can find it either in the Petsmart, R.C Steele, or Foster & Smith pet catalogs, can’t remember off hand). Its basically a mesh kitty tunnel that closes on both ends, you can set it outside, get extensions if needed and all sorts of fun things- the point is that your cat can go outside and hang out in his kitty tunnel & watch birds and be safe. My cats mostly want to sit in the grass and roll in the dirt when they get out, so they could do that in the kitty tunnel. Obviously I wouldn’t leave your cat out in it while you were gone, but it might be a good way to give them some fresh air and quit the nagging (or it might make the nagging 20X worse).

14

My mom had a cat that sat by the window and stared outside for hours on end. I felt bad for him but she moved to an apartment. Way too many cars to consider letting him out, especially after losing 2 cats to cars. She got an aquarium and that kept him fascinated for hours. It was also fascinating for us. YMMV.

15

I figured this might spark up the indoor/outdoor controversy. Everyone please play nice. (Heh, this is how I talk to the kitties.)

Just for background, the reason I don’t let them out is primarily for their safety and longevity. When I first moved to this house, I had an indoor/outdoor cat with me – he was born outdoors, and had always loved to go out, so I never tried to change that. 5 weeks after moving in here, he disappeared; his body was found 6 months later in somebody’s backyard, apparently hit by a car.

This neighborhood is full of dangers, like most neighborhoods – kids drag-racing on sidestreets (“damn kids!” ::shakes fist::), pit bulls and Rottweilers trotting around unleashed, busy streets nearby, etc. Not to mention antifreeze – which cats think is delicious, and it’s deadly – slug bait, and the general increased incidence of injuries, disease, and parasites to which outdoor cats are routinely exposed. And also not to mention the pooping-in-people’s-gardens issue, and the decimating-entire-populations-of-songbirds issue. I’m a pretty firm believer in keeping cats indoors if at all possible.

Now, for that reason, I love the harness idea, with supervised playtime outside. A year ago we had a pooping-inappropriately problem, and the vet diagnosed boredom and psychological frustration, so I changed quite a few things; started giving the cat more attention, more toys, more gentle discipline; and the problem went away (::knock on wood::). One possible solution the vet recommended was harnessed walks outdoors. (The yelling-at-doors thing had started back then, though not as bad as now.)

The neighbors think I’m crazy as it is, so I don’t see walking up and down the streets with a harnessed cat in tow, but I have a wonderfully overgrown backyard to explore. He’ll get fleas, but I can deal with that. I’ll definitely try out the harness thing.

Boscibo mentioned letting them into rooms normally closed off. I used to have a Secret Room of Mystery, which I could open for around half an hour’s worth of cat distraction time. But I decided to open the room permanently, just to give them more house to take over (and me, more house to heat). There are no more Forbidden Areas left, except the Outside.

I also love the idea of just leaving the room when he starts in with the yowling. I spend most of my time in front of the computer, which is 3 feet from the outside door, and faces it. There is no better spot for the cat to get my attention, than standing right by the door. I may have to rearrange things. But I’ve already seen that when I leave the computer and go to another room, the cats usually follow. There’s no point in yelling at a door, if the master isn’t there to see and hear it, apparently. Great suggestion. I shall get off my fat butt more often.

I’ll also explore the tunnel-from-a-window system, and maybe even pick up an aquarium. Hee, my pets are having pets. THANK YOU all, for the great suggestions.

16

Okay I’ve got a real yowler. I feel sorry for him because he only started doing it after he survived a house fire(it was in the basement and he hid under my bed three flights up). So now poor Elroy has Post Tramatic Stress Disorder or something.

I can’t let him out by himself. The cars on my street go way way too fast. We lost two cats when I was a little kid. That’s ignoring the dogs that may be wandering the neighborhood especially since Elroy way inherited from my mom and he’s declawed.

Now getting to my point. If I have a cat on a leash, and a dog comes up to us, how am I going to protect him?

-Lil

17

We “walk” our cat on a leash and a harness. I would strongly suggest a harness for a cat as opposed to a collar. I put walk in quotes because he likes to be carried quite a bit – little Gryffin is as lazy as sin, really. I carry him (with harness on and leash looped around my arm just in case) to the park, and then we stand in the park while he ambles around. Once he’s done sniffing the area, he is very content to roll about in the grass while I sit on a blanket with a book (still holding on to the leash just in case).

In terms of dogs, I always try to be aware of any dog coming close to us who is not on a leash. Our area has leash laws, so an unleashed dog on the street is rather uncommon. If we pass a dog on a leash, I always call out to the dog owner well in advance of the passing that I’ve got a cat on a leash, in case he/she didn’t notice. I have never had a problem with a dog while walking on the street.

In the park, however, it is more common for dogs to be off the leash. In theory, the dog owner should be responsible for his own dog, in reality I would rather be more proactive and always on the look-out for dogs that might be approaching. I would rather have an unharmed cat than to be philosophically in the right about who was responsible for a harmed cat. The only dogs that have come close to us while not on a leash have been the playful, curious kind, and when that happens, I pick up the cat and stand up. One benefit of a harness is that if you really had to, you could haul the cat in like a fish on a line, and if the cat was nervous and clawing, you can hold him away from you with the harness so he doesn’t accidentally injure you. I occasionally pick up our cat with one hand on the harness, and the other on his rump, facing him away from me while still keeping him close to my body so that he’s used to being picked up this way.

If you haven’t walked your cat before, I’d recommend practicing with the harness and leash inside your house before going outside. If the cat is skittish about the leash inside, he’s going to be worse outside if that is unfamiliar to him. Let him wear the harness inside until he is used to it, and then attach the leash and let it trail after him (always when you are home, if he’s unattended the leash could snag on something) for a while. Some cats don’t like to be picked up, this could be a problem with taking a cat outside on a leash. Our cat doesn’t mind being held “baby style” or slung over a shoulder, so that has been a real plus.

18

I can’t help but thing that that’s probably because she’s plotting your death. :slight_smile:

(No offence; it’s just that we live out in the country, so just about all the cats I know are very outdoor cats, and I can’t imagine any of them submitting to a leash. It’s probably not universally true - she may settle for maiming :))

Err, yeah. I’ll stop hijacking the thread now as I don’t seem to have anything constructive to add.

19

Actually, Eponine took to her leash and harness like a duck to water. I just popped it on her and off we went. She stands quietly while I hook her up (which the dogs still don’t do), and trots around perfectly content. She’s never tried to slip the harness, or done that I’m-not-coming-and-you-can’t-make-me thing, or tried to drag me down the street, unlike certain other pets of ours who shall remain nameless.

20

I wouldn’t say that Cobalt and Rhodium took to the harness instantly - Cobalt did a great job of trying to convince us that it weighed about 5000 pounds - but they’re both pretty good about it now. They squirm a little while getting the harness on, and I’m sure they’d rather go outside without it, but given a choice between outside with a harness and inside all the time, I think they’d pick the harness.

We don’t go beyond the yard - they circle the house a few times, pacing out their territory, and pounce on the ants, and stalk through the 2" high grass as if it provides some concealment. They seem to have accepted the “force field” around the house (i.e., the pull of the leash when they go too far), and they stay off the sidewalk.

Overall, I think we get less whining about going outside this way.