Anyone know some good, relatively nonviolent kitty behavior modification techniques? I just bought my first real piece of grownup furniture (a couch, yay!), and the kitty has been relatively well-behaved, but I have caught him clawing it a couple of times.
I’ve tried the squirt bottle approach, but so far it doesn’t seem to have a lasting effect on his behavior. I am opposed to declawing for humane reasons. Any other tips?
Okay, so your cat doesn’t mind water…
Try rattling a bunch of pennies in an empty coffee can - makes a REALLY loud, unpleasant sound.
Your local pet store will also have liquids & sprays that you can apply to the couch, which purportedly smell really awful to cats but neutral to humans. I have heard mixed results about these.
Diverting the behavior to an approved scratching post can also help. You can rub a small amount of catnip on the official designated scratching post to attract the cat to it. Repeat application every few days, as the smell fades.
Oh! And clip your cat’s claws regularly - like once a week or every 10 days. After a while they don’t mind it so much, and it does help reduce the need for clawing in the first place.
Good luck!
Fatso isn’t interested in either catnip or scratching posts. The clipping thing gets even more unhappy reactions, and has been a 3-person job ever since he was a kitten. I’ll try the pet store, though; thanks for the idea!
You have to be careful when clipping claws. If you cut them too far down, it’s painful for the cat. Cats often do not like having the movement of their paws restricted. If the cat is still a kitten, he will probably eventually get used to it, though, if you do it often enough. If he’s already grown, it’s a lot harder to get him to adjust to it.
One tecnique my brother-in-law uses is to loosely roll up a sheet of newspaper and use it to either swat the cat’s behind or hit the floor near him; it doesn’t hurt the critter, but the sound makes him think he’s getting mauled.
RR
He’s 8 years old, but hated it even when he was a kitten. I think it’s too late to teach a middle-aged kitty new tricks, at least if I want to keep the tendons in my hands. I never hurt him when I did do it; he just has his own ideas.
The only–and best–thing I have found to distract our kitties away from the furniture is to buy them their own furniture. Cats like height–they like being able to survey their territory–so we bought this huge cat tower. It’s about 7’ tall, with little landing perches at 3’, 5’, and just under 7’. As soon as we brought that home, the cats forgot the sofas existed. They even have their own favorite perches–hyper Mija likes to be way up on top, whereas more mellow (and much larger) Inigo settles for 5’. In the 6 months we’ve had it, they’ve managed to reduce it to ribbons.
It also helped during the re-training to use double-sided tape. Cats HATE sticky stuff on their paws. We applied the stuff (you can buy large strips for this purpose at pet stores) to the cats’ previous favorite parts of the sofas. They hated it so much it was worse than water…not long after applying it, the two cats were spazzing out, jumping here and there, when one landed on the back of the sofa where tape had been applied. Outright spooked, she leapt crookedly off as soon as she touched it and hissed when she hit the ground. A month or so later, I experimented and held Inigo over a part of the sofa he’d learned was sticky. You’d think I was holding him over a swimming pool! He scrambled and stretched and essentially did all he could to avoid it.
So, my recommendations are: 1) Buy a cat tree. I suggest the taller the better, and place it by the new furniture. Our cat tree is very simple and cost just $60; the more complicated ones with the little houses and such are nice, but overkill. Just go for tall. 2) Apply double-sided tape to areas the cats are likely to start scratching. It’ll be unsightly for a while, but once the cats have adopted their own furniture, you can remove it and alls should be well.
Good luck! 
I can clip my cats’ claws if I catch them at a very tired moment and can distract them at the same time by scratching behind the ears.
The cats’ claws are less sharp but can still do damage.
Well FWIW If you can’t modify the behaviour, get the clear plastic sheeting and nail it on the couch to the favored spots. I’d think you could find them in a larger pet store or maybe a furniture place? Granted it will look silly, but they can’t get thier claws into the plastic like they can the cloth.
I imagine if you’re in the poor house like me maybe a few cut up 2 ltr bottles attached with thumb tacks?or nail a few carpet pieces there as well, but it would not stop them from clawing, only cease the damage to the furniture.
No pickin’ fun. It was just a suggestion.
I have to admit that grabbing my cats by the scruff of the neck - a signal they understand to mean you’re the dominant one AND angry at them - and yelling at them tends to work wonders. Cats can be disciplined if you’re consistent.
Sorry, Ruffian, but I couldn’t resist it. After misreading your post, I had visions of you throwing sticky-taped cats at their furniture. 
FWIW nothing we have tried has prevented our cat scratching our furniture. His only redeeming feature is that he doesn’t scratch furniture when in other people’s homes.
Bah, you guys can think yourself lucky. Far beyond scratching my furniture, one of my cats feels the need to continually piss on my bed every time I’m stupid enough to leave the bedroom door open!
I have been forced to install a rubber under sheet, which isn’t exactly an easy thing to explain away to new partners etc.
I’d suggest some brilliant and novel solutions to your clawing problem, but let’s face it, I can’t even stop my cat pissing on the bed so I can’t exactly be considered a cat discipline expert. 
You guys crack me up! I don’t know if I’m willing to actually nail stuff to a brand-spanking-new sofa, but maybe the double-sided tape wouldn’t leave too much damage. Kitty is pretty darn fat, so I don’t know whether the scruff of the neck idea is healthy for him. Cat trees, scratching posts, etc. haven’t worked in the past; he’d rather piss me off. (He is fond of the front door, though.)
Well, I guess I can count myself lucky that he doesn’t pee on the bed…I guess there’s a silver lining to everything.
Nothing I tried worked (they hate spray bottles of water and it still didn’t deter them), so I had mine declawed a year ago (at age 4), but it sounds like Ruffian may be on to something. It’s definitely a case of different things for different cats.
The trick to training a cat is to make them think the punishment (whatever it is) is an act of God. If YOU scold kitty for clawing furniture, he’ll just wait til you aren’t there. If you can sneak up on him and scare him or whatever, he’ll think it’s divine punishment. This is how we stopped Molly from knocking ornaments off the Christmas tree; hubby waited until she was totally absorbed in knocking an ornament off the tree, then crept up behind her and swatted her off the couch. Three years later she still won’t touch a Christmas tree.
Then again, that doublesided tape idea sounds pretty good, too.
The trick is figuring out what your particular cat likes. Before The Mighty Cat Tree, we had tried not one, not two, but…counting…6 different scratching toys. Two were completely ignored–they are the type that hang on doorknobs. Bad idea. Cats like what they scratch to be secure, so scratching on something that’s wobbly won’t cut it.
Okay, nobody laugh, but I recently bought a book on modifying kitty behavior/training. The key point the author reiterates is that you have to determine what the cat likes/what their “motivation” is. When it comes to scratching, observe how the cat is scratching–do they like to stretch long and tall and reach above them? Or are they “horizontal scratchers” that like to stretch out and scratch on the ground/furniture beneath them? (These cats typically like sharpening claws on carpet.)
If your cat likes to reach up and scratch, he/she needs a scratching post long and tall enough to accomodate their desire to fully stretch out. Few scratching posts on the market can match Inigo’s massive length–but my sofa did.
You say cat trees haven’t worked in the past. What kind of cat trees? How tall? My suggestion is that you just haven’t yet found the right alternative.
The name of the book, BTW, is Psycho Kitty? and actually makes for great reading.
Actually, the same brother-in-law who has had to use the rolled-up newspaper swears by your technique, too. He had a long-range water gun lying on a table aimed at a particular trouble spot. When the cat started to do whatever he wasn’t supposed to be doing (I forget what they were trying to break him of), Bob could just reach over and squeeze the trigger and the kitty would get squirted with water from an unknown source.
RR
River, the main problem with that technique is it only works when you’re around to spray the kitty. (“Spray the Kitty”–BAND NAME!)
We keep a squirt bottle near the sofas to spook the kitties when they jump up on the kitchen counters, dining room table, etc. It works–when we’re there to spray them. Meanwhile, I come home from work and find pawprints on my kitchen counters. :mad:
One modification technique I read for correcting that kind of behavior is much like what I suggested for the sofa-scratching–put something tactilely unpleasant to the kitty down on the area the cat should avoid. For a while I put cookie sheets full of water on tables (heh heh–damn funny too… :jump: SPLASH! “ACK!” scramblescramblescramble VROOM!), but the started rusting out. So…now I’m back to double sided tape.
You can buy cat repellent strays, too, at the pet store.
“Cat repellent strays?” Don’t they usually come from the local kitty shelter?
I found that you can’t teach a cat NOT to do something - only to not get CAUGHT doing it.
The only exception was biting - I was able to make that activity intrinsically unpleasant by jamming my hand down the little bastards’ throats.
I like the adhesive idea, also the repellant (if yours is one of the few for which such things work).
As to clipping nails - use big, heavy clippers designed for the purpose - your basic drugstore nail clippers can shatter a claw.
Use a towel to wrap the little monster’s rear legs up tight against it’s body, with the forelegs out - bieng so immobilized usually quiets a cat - if it’s still fiesty, gently swat it’s muzzle - another way to say “I’m boss here, and can kill you if I so choose” (cats understand this).
Otherwise the only thing is the “devine wrath” - tie the punishment to the action, not a person’s reaction to it.
anyone ever try mixing a little lemon juice in the squirt gun? the thought just occured to me THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION!!!
You don’t even have to have double sided tape, apparently. My cats don’t like the smooth, slick tape (I use the clear package tape). Works well, and if I do see the kitties reaching for areas that don’t have tape, I YELL! really loud and that scares the bejeezus out of them.
Then, the second they stop, I praise them mightily for doing what I asked. This is a very important step in training any animal - letting them know what they did RIGHT.