For Del and all other "Cat Masters"

Sorry dunno really, asside from shooing the cat away when it does bad things and distracting it with lots of play. You gotta enjoy the play tho else the cat will know. When I was a kitten I'd play fetch and catch with silver paper sweet wrappers, mind I'd also run up the hessian wallpaper and be stuck on the wall like a demented Garfield.
Or pick said cat up and chuck it (gently) outside when it exibits unwanted behaviour.(Assuming you are on the ground floor).
Sldey cat is a good game to, it requires a polished wooden floor, I'm sure you can work out the general concept.

We can be trained but it requires patience. I now know that if I start coughing, I must trot outside...dunno why...cat puke on the carpet is fine by me.
BTW Fttzzzhissspittzzzzz mean No
Del

Cats can be trained...even though they and everyone else will tell you they cant.

ok...want proof? All cats have two names right, one you give them and the other is whatever sound you make everytime you get their food ready.

Nice thing is that also tells you how to train them. Just like a dog, with treats. Even though you are a 'dog guy' that doesnt mean you know how to train an animal properly. Not any knock against you or your pet(s), its just that training requires training the owners too. There are many good books and websites (I would find some and put a link in, but I am away from home) that will teach you how to train your animals. It takes more time and determination than I had to give to my last dog. I had to give him away to a family that could train him.

I like the 'clicker' training because it trains them away from the treat too.

As I recall the core of the training is to reward them when doing good and ignore when bad. So reward the cat when it uses your scratching post and put it in a safe room alone when it is bad.

Also! Find out what is dangerous to cats, lots of stuff in your house will kill or sicken your new feline.

Drew

Sounds like your cat has been kept inside ever since. We let our cats go outside where they preferred scratching tree bark. also we permitted the cat to have one sofa as their inside release. The declawing is traumatic, but if the cat is going to be inside cat forever and ever amen, then declawing will save your furniture. At the risk of your then defenseless cat being clobbered if it ever gets outside... To break the cat of scratching certain items, we covered them with aluminum foil and sat guard with squirt guns. Cat figured out where we didnt squirt . milo (On my macbook, don't know where the paragraph breaks went)

Just been speaking with Mrs Cat (who knows about these things)
It's like training kids, reward good behaviour e.g scratching the scratching post or an old doormat with strokies or a (little) tid bit.
Punish bad behaviour, clap loudly shout 'no' or push the cat away if it is scratching something it shouldn't.

Play with it before it starts scratching....not because it's scratching as that may be seen a rewarding bad behaviour.
Don't de-claw, it won't be able to defend it's territory.
Del

(PS in previous post I meant 'slidey' cat)

Water squirts often work quite well to show your displeasure with a cat's actions. But if you overdo this it will wear thin on you and the cat. You can trim a cat's claws, and their easier than a dog's claws to trim. Cat claws do not have an internal blood vessel like dogs do. The best solution I've found for this is letting them go outside and work on tree bark. The other option is to provide some sacrificial material to be clawed. I've found that carpet scraps work very well for this, but not the top side. The burlap and knots side of the carpet works very well for most cats to scratch. This seems to mimic bark better than the prettier soft side of the carpet.

Dogs have masters. Cats have staff.

Delete Cat ver1.0, Install Dog ver2.0....

At least the Dog will come & say Hello even if you don't have food.

Regards,
Sapper

I agree with Milo. Let the cat have lots of outdoor time. I've never 'trained' a cat, but I've seen that the 'claw play' which kittens do incessantly is well satisfied by a normal cat life, and is not a problem after about 6 months age as long as they are having their time outside.

Cats outside

Cats are like potato chips - no one can have just one. We have two, an upstairs cat and a downstairs cat. If we had a third floor, or if the cats we have were more sociable, I would have another cat. Of course, I might find myself short a wife... The upstairs cat is a scratcher and I clip her claws regularly using human nail clippers. You have to be real careful to just take off the sharp tips. Don't cut near the base of the claw or you will draw blood, perhaps cause infection, and at the very least ensure that the cat will never, ever, let you clip its claws again.

The downstairs cat is another matter. She is also a scratcher, but absent thick leather body armor, or a Bloodmobile to make some use of the mayhem that would ensue, I'm not anxious to take her on. She gets the downstairs, which is my office and old furniture, where the damage she can do is limited to the value of the furniture we choose to sacrifice.

So the answer is, you have to work around your particular cat, and don't forget, like one poster said, "Dogs have masters, cats have staff."

Oh, by the way, we also have three large dogs, black labs or black lab wannabes. The downstairs cat is large, about fifteen pounds, but she is less than a fourth of the mass of one of our lab wannabees. And she will back him up in a corner and have him whimpering in fear. Another old saying: "Cats rule, dogs drool."

emc_c

Spray that which you don't want shredded with Indoor No. Works pretty well.

Temple of cat worship

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