Pretty much this. Our cats aren’t allowed in our bedroom at night because my husband and I keep our door closed for privacy (one or more of my stepkids have always lived with us) and therefore there is no litter box access.
If I’m sick in bed during the day, or if I take a nap on the weekends, I keep the door open and the cats can join me on the bed then.
Our basement is unfinished, full of nooks and crannies, and cluttered to boot, so we keep them out of there for their safety and our peace of mind.
Our cats are allowed anywhere they want to go except kitchen counter and one special off-limits family room, the “cat-free zone” where we allow my allergic brother-in-law to hang out when he visits (and any other allergic folks).
So what’s going to happen to them?
Our basement is also unfinished, full of nooks and crannies, and cluttered to boot.
That’s where the litter boxes live.
And if I find a cat under the table saw, no big deal. Sometimes I find one sitting on a box high on the shelving. Likewise no big deal.
They seem to be pretty darned good at navigating dangerous surroundings.
Of course, there was that one time when Garfield appeared with singed whiskers. I imagine he poked his nose under our gas-fired hot water heater and got more than he bargained for. Only had to try that trick once.
Not so much space, but time. Our dog is allowed on the bed, but not when someone is eating in bed, or when we are sleeping. However, when one of us is away she is welcome, since the is space.
My dogs are all over the place. They have no boundaries although i’m currently trying to get them into the habbit of sleeping on the floor instead of in my bed. I’m tired of always have dog hair on the top side of my covers!! Which to my surprise is actually working very well especially if you believe that old saying, “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks”
I used to believe that but not anymore. My oldest dog is over 5 yrs old and it was the hardest thing trying to get her to understand that since i have two dogs now she’ll no longer be allowed on my bed at night. It took almost 3 months before it started sinking in.
My youngest who is almost two. . . Well now she’s a different story, she’s got the mentality of “you can’t, but I can” and i end up booting her off my bed several times throughout the night. . But I think she’s slowly starting to get the hint. (I can only hope.) She sheds really bad!! Long white dog hair all over a brand new black top is not attractive at all!!!
Dog…Free to go where she likes except there is a child gate (with a cat size hole) across the basement steps to keep her from snacking from the kitty’s litter box. She’s welcome to sleep on the bed with me at night but I close the bedroom door during the day because she’d never get off the bed if she had full access to it. The only reason I don’t want her on the bed all day is because she sheds quite a bit. I keep a bedsheet over the downstairs couches to preserve them.
Cat…Full access also except I keep the door to the laundry room closed to keep him from sleeping in the laundry basket on my clean clothes. I chase him off the kitchen counters when he hops up there but it’s not that often.
The cat can, of course, go anywhere she darn well chooses.
The two dogs can’t go on the furniture or into the room where the cat eats and does her business, and they can’t hang out next to us when we’re eating, but other than they’re welcome to go wherever they please, which is usually right next to me or my wife.
We do our best to keep the cats off the counters and the table. Which really means that they get on them anyway when we’re at work and can’t stop it. But we do try. They’re welcome in bed with us - the youngest sometimes snuggles with one of us under the covers for a half hour or so every morning. I love it.
My 2 dogs pretty much go where they want. We keep the spare bedroom door closed at all times but it’s less to keep them out and more to keep the cold in. They are allowed in our room only if we are in there. They sleep with us every night and have for about a month now. Before that they were in the crate all night. Once Ginger stopped having “accidents”, they stopped being banned from the bed.
They are allowed on the couch and love seat whenever they want, the recliner too but they don’t like it because it rocks. It’d be kind of hard to ban them from the dining room or kitchen since they and the living room are all one huge space. They are allowed in the basement but they’re afraid of stairs so they never go down there.
They’re not allowed in the attic or the loft (for safety reasons) and this has the potential to be a problem if they ever get over their stair fear since the staircase is in the living room and is one-sided. I’m not sure how we’d get a baby gate on there.
The dog is 70ish pounds. She is the most restricted in terms of where she can go in the house and what she can do. She never gets on my bed… she’s too damn big and stinky. She sleeps on the floor next to the bed, though. She isn’t allowed to even put her front paws up on the kitchen counters. She can get on the furniture, because we keep fabric covers spread on them. One room is off-limits to her via a pet gate or closed door because of the litterbox. The master bedroom door is closed when no humans are in the house so the cats have an escape route from the dog, just in case something happens with no one there to moderate.
Cats have free run of the damn house because it’s too damn much trouble to keep them out of stuff. I will shoo them off the counters if I see them there, but it’s only our juvenile delinquent cat who does that. He probably gets up there when no one is home. I didn’t want to be that person who slept with her cats, but I had to adopt a crybaby who kept me awake when I tried to keep her out of the bedroom.
Right now I have cats, and no rules–but for some reason, I’ve never had cats that particularly wanted to get on my counters. I’m sure there are some rules, and if they violated them I’d…do…something.
They did absolutely wreck a brand-new rug I got for the living room. I was thinking my next rug might be catskin. However, in reality, that won’t happen. I heard some guy at a party bragging about his Russian Blues that cost $800 apiece and I’m thinking, “If you deduct the cost of the rug, my cats are worth that…”
However, when I have dogs, I have a few more rules. And unlike cats, dogs will follow the rules, for the most part.
I have a dog and a cat, and they’re pretty much allowed to go wherever they want (with the exception that I have a room gated off so the dog can’t eat out of the litter box).
However, I’m pretty lucky in that neither cares to get on the counters or the table. When the dog was younger, I had to keep him out of the closets or he’d chew up my shoes and laundry. He doesn’t do that now, so I’ve gotten kind of lax about keeping the door closed.
The thing about setting ‘rules’ for the pets is that unless you physically restrain them when you’re not around, your ‘rules’ don’t mean jack. People who say things like “my cat can go anywhere except the counters” are in denial. The minute your back is turned, that cat is scooting her ass all over the joint. Once you make peace with that fact, you’ll all be a lot happier.
I will apologize here for being so harsh in my one post in the original thread (not that I imagine anyone notices me, particularly.) I gave my opinion honestly - but far more rudely - than I intended once I revisited that thread a few days later.
This. I don’t stand over the counter all day, so I know the cats have been up there. Knowing that, I wipe it down whenever I do happen to be standing there. Hell, I’ll occasionally find one of them napping in the kitchen cabinet, but that’s why God made tupperware.
My cats cry piteously any time a door divides us, so I only do it when I have a reason. Basically, my bedroom door is only closed when I’m gettin’ busy, and the bathroom door is only closed if I’m handling anything toxic (cleaning stuff, hair dye, etc.).
Otherwise, they have the run of the place, with the exceptions of the tv stand and my dresser/drawers, when they try to get on or in those, the spray bottle comes out. They’re allowed on all the other furniture, and they usually sleep with me. I do a lot of cleaning because of it, but what’s the point of having cute fuzzy things that you don’t snuggle?
In my earlier post I forgot to brag about how good my animals are about staying out of the trash. Sometimes I swear I could throw a T-bone and a salmon filet in the trash can and they wouldn’t bother it.
Nothing terrible, probably. But they could get caught someplace that would be a lot of trouble to extract them from. Like the time one of them got wedged behind the massive storage unit in the garage, which had to be dismantled to rescue him. And we don’t want them making the place more of a mess than it is. There really is a lot of stuff that could get knocked over if these two got into one of their daily chase-play-fight sessions down there.