I find this also works on animal lovers who think correcting animal behavior in a pet context is cruel. squirts NO.
Now, if only it worked on other Dopers…
You got company. 
How is a “shake can” useful for animal training? That is, unless it’s something other than what I’m thinking of…
Negative reinforcement. It startles them. They eventually associate the (couch, counter, bed) with the sound and they avoid it.
What PunditLisa said–you fill a soup can with pennies or whatever, tape it shut, and rattle it once hard when the cat is doing something you don’t want it to do. In some cases it works better than a squirtgun because you don’t have to aim it and sound cannot be dodged.
Attic. Guin lives in her parents’ attic. Totally different.
As I pointed out in the other thread, once you’ve had a valuable and fragile item fall down from somewhere and break (the stereo falling off the mantel), it’s pretty dumb to put another fragile item (the vase) in that same place, unless you actually want it to fall down and break. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results every time.
The one funny thing in the original post is that lissener is so damned sure that the cat is smarter than him…and he’s right.
The cat knew that he’d be sewing his own clothes and repeatedly made a 9-foot straight vertical jump to the top of a closet shelf 4 months in advance of when lissner would need the machine and carefully pee’d on it…with magic unscented cat-pee, apparently, because if one of MY cats pissed in my closet–I’d notice the smell and discoloration.
Lissener had a massive psychological breakthrough with his art and the cat knew, KNEW that it could emotionally cripple lissener (more) by shredding that one, particular item.
Apparently this cat is the feline equivilant of The Brain.
And we all know the reason for this original thread. Lissener’s earlier bid for attention (The Hur-hur–dis guy is creepy. What’s creepier dan dis?) thread got stepped on by Twickster so people couldn’t say stuff like “Gee, despite having a skin disease, he’s living in a clean home and wearing clean clothes and not buried under 1000 molding, rancid pizza boxes. I dunno…maybe if we buy him a Hermes scarf he’d be more to your liking?”) and he didn’t get his desired pile-on. So he came up with the “Throw the evil super-genius cat to the rabid raccoon” story.
I see cat ladies do this all the frickin’ time. Not to sound sexist, but I don’t see crazy old cat men very often. I have a friend who says there’s one down the street from her, so I believe they exist. I’ve only seen this with cat women though. They cover every horizontal space with fragile valuables, the cat knocks something over and then they loooove to complain about it. “Oh, bad kitty! That was great-great-great-grandmama’s!” It was the only thing she managed to save while escaping the war by crossing Siberia naked in winter on her hands and knees while subsisting on lichens. Bad, bad, kitty!" Of course they scold kitty in the exact same sing-song they use to praise kitty. “Bad kitty, no!” comes out exactly like “good kitty, yes!”
Then they put something equally valuable and fragile right back in the same spot. Rinse repeat. Cat ladies apparently have infinite supplies of valuable breakables. It’s like they secretly want to get rid of some of that old junk but they can’t so they frame their cats for it.
Why do they do this???
Beats me. Our house includes two klutzy humans and two cats, so we keep the number of breakables to a minimum, and make sure they are somewhere safe. Maybe you’re right that they actually want to get rid of the stuff but can’t bring themselves to. Or maybe they like to complain?
I don’t think it’s even a cat person thing. I don’t care for cats myself and I think it’s messed up. I’d be pissed at a cat doing annoying things in my house but that’s why I don’t HAVE a cat.
We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen.
I think they’re putting the “crazy” in “crazy cat lady.” We have two cats, and there are any number of ways that we have changed our lives and home to accommodate the little pests.
Or, I happen to be an animal lover, with several cats myself, and I think what he did was disgusting?
Asshole.
That original thread was so sad. It was a badly behaved cat with an owner who was ill equipped to train her into appropriate behaviors. Cats are finicky creatures, they like the territories they’ve established and despise clutter and new things. Most of the time, they just rub their faces all over the new things, but once in a while, you get a kitty who pees to leave their scent behind. Oh, and if you’ve witnessed the cat trying to get into other animals’ cages, wouldn’t it make sense to either not have a house full of animals the kitty doesn’t like or keep them in a separate room with the doors closed? Then again, the poster made the call to post this shameful anecdote for the world to see, so I don’t know that he had much sense in the first place.
And I’m curious as to how a cat can sneak into a tall shelf of a closet anyway. Don’t people usually keep their closet doors… closed? Otherwise, it’s not much of a closet.
<smooch>
Well said, my friend.
I noticed that lissener mentioned the peeing episodes after talking about bringing in a new kitten. Territorial behavior (which can include inappropriate peeing) is common in cats when a new cat is brought into the household. You can’t just expect to bring in another cat, throw it in with your existing cat, and expect everybody to get along and everything to go smoothly right away.
That occurred to me, too. It doesn’t seem to me that having pets in the same house that want to eat each other is a good idea. You give up certain opportunities when you get a pet. If you get a dog, you give up the chance to not go out of the house for walks in bad weather and to not pick up dog doo. If you get a cat, one of the things you give up is the chance to have pets that the cat considers prey. If you have pets that cats normally consider to be prey, one of the things you give up is the chance to have a cat. I might like to have a fish tank, but I don’t, because I know the cats couldn’t be trusted to leave it alone. You can’t always have everything you want.
Hey! Lissener had to fight his way out of that closet, don’t you fucking dare close the door again!