I wish I could teach them to play bona fide
fetch : throw light toy or object and they retrieve and drop it at my feet for next round.
Lets do it
My old cat, when something was wrong with her world, she’d come and meow at me - she had a special “fix this!” meow - and then she’d lead me over to whatever was wrong: I’d like the litterbox cleaned, I want fresh water, I want the window open, top up my food please. Sometimes I couldn’t fix it (rain, snow, dietary restrictions), but she’d accept it if I couldn’t change it.
The new cat just screams for things to be fixed, but there’s never any indication as to what’s wrong. Plus she has serious chronic health conditions, so sometimes it’s I’d like fresh water please and other times the exact same meow means we have to go to the 24-hour emergency vet right now. Which is really much less helpful and informative than I’d like it to be. Also, if it’s something I can’t fix, she just decides that I haven’t understood and keeps meowing.
Ah shit, sorry to hear that bud
Use the toilet and remember to flush
Pick 1
Only knowing how to flush sounds really annoying. Knowing cats they would just start flushing over and over again when they are bored.
Wouldn’t u?
I’m ok with explaining to guests why there could be a surprise in the bowl
Easily done.
To teach the shitting part you’ll need a spare toilet seat. Take that seat and screw it into a toilet box and place it next to the toilet. Every few weeks raise the spare seat up by a few inches until it’s next to the toilet. Then remove the spare seat and box.
To teach how to flush, react with treats every time the cat hits the flusher. Be prepared for all night flushing.
To remember that we’ve spent almost 18 years together and that we’re best friends. That we’ve carried each other and comforted each other through so much.
There was that time I had to climb fifty feet up a tree with hardly any limbs with ropes and a harness to get him when the crows goaded him into climbing higher. The rusty antique farm equipment below would have mangled him had he fallen. I had to lift him with one hand, balanced, hoping he would roll out of my grip, and put him in a cinch top bag with a rope attached to lower him to my wife on the ground. Once he reached her hands, I broke down and sobbed while I made my way to them. I was so scared. I woke up the next day and he was curled up around my hand, holding tightly. He didn’t want to go outside for months.
He pees on me regularly now. Sometimes when I come home with my hands full and can’t give him attention immediately. Sometimes when I’ve been home all day and he didn’t get a snack fast enough. Maybe his kitten baby sister is trying to play with him or he’s stuck on the other side of the door while I’m brushing my teeth. He has hyperthyroidism and kidney disease. We give him everything, do the best we can for his health care, but it’s getting close to the time we say goodbye and it’s breaking my heart.
I just wish he’d remember me the way I remember him.
I lifted him onto my lap yesterday morning, out of the reach of his gentle but playful six month old kitten sister. He peed all down the front of me. I didn’t scold; I just held him until he was done, knowing the last time I hold him isn’t far away.
I can’t read this tonite, you already got me teary
Had a cat that was able to fetch. It was so cute and he always made such a proud face when he brought back the object I threw. I miss him so much.
Taught my gf’s cat to do that, my own doesn’t most of the time though which is very disappointing
To rob a bank and make a clean getaway.
Doesn’t PussInBoots already do that?
My cat did that, with nerf gun bullets. But she insists that she taught me to throw the toys, rather than me teaching her to fetch.
I mean, thats fair, u on the wrong side or this issue 😂
Stop meowing at night after I’m asleep.
How come they don’t join you when its bedtime?
They do. Then after I fall asleep, they start walking around the house and yowling.
Anyone wanna jump in with how to mitigate this? Never had this problem once I had more than one cat so they could entertain themseves if they weren’t already laying between my legs asleep lol
Ooh! I’ve actually got something for this! It takes some work and consistency, but it’s pretty fool-proof eventually.
You got to play with them right before bed.
And I don’t mean just a little waving the wand around and watch them jump at it a bit. Give them a workout. My two cats, one’s pretty chill and her energy level isn’t too high. The other guy though, he’s basically a dog. Always wants to play, and play a lot. This worked wonders for him.
Anyway, so you find a toy they really like, and figure out the kind of play that gets them engaged. Some like to hunt, some like to chase. But whatever it is, you got to get them moving, and keep it up until they’re panting like a dog. It’s perfectly healthy, cats just don’t often get that much of a workout so we don’t see it. So you do that, and they’ll rest for 5-10 minutes, then want to go again. Do that over and over until they don’t get back up begging for more after 10 minutes. They’ll be exhausted. Then do your nightly routine and go to bed.
This won’t work overnight as their routines will get them up and running soon. But you do that every night for a couple weeks and they’ll start to sync up to your schedule.
Couple other things that make it easier:
-
When they try to wake you up in the morning and get your attention, don’t get out of bed. Don’t give them attention. You’re trying to get their sleep schedule to match yours so you have to let them know that you’re not available until a certain time.
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Having your own routine of going to sleep at the same time every night. Cats are really good at knowing about what time it is and they need consistency. I’m in bed by 9:30 every night, play-time starts at 8:30 every night. If you vary it up they’re never going to know when to sleep.
3)Feeding times. I know a lot of people just leave food out in a bowl, but that’s not healthy for most cats (And honestly, for the healthiest, at least wet food is best). You want to figure out how much they should be eating every day and measure out just that much divided by meals. Most are fine with twice a day, since cat’s would naturally eat at dusk and dawn, so just before you leave for work (assuming typical 9-5 schedule) and right before bed. I work from home so I do 3 meals a day, and that helps to wake them up mid day so they’ll need more sleep at night.
3b) This can vary a lot, but typically a wild cat’s routine would be to hunt, eat, groom, then sleep. So you organize play-time with eating, you play them tired (simulate hunting), feed them, They groom themselves while you get ready for bed, then you both sleep. My cats are weird though, they don’t play before eating. Not into it. But right after they eat they get excited to chase each other around a bit and play, so we do it then.
It did take my energetic boy longer than 2 weeks (closer to a month), but his energy levels even after a year old were through the roof and abnormal. I think it’s the breed. But now when it gets close to play time he waits next to the toy closet anticipating it. Then I play with them, then they chase each other around for about 10 minutes, but then they’re tired so we all go to bed and he sleeps next to me in bed every night instead of running around.
-
Could be individual, I know of cats that are super noisy at night. Otoh know cats that are active but pretty stealthy at that (like they are supposed to be being stealth predators, idk)
Shitting in the toilet
I wish I could get her to understand that sometimes doors need to be closed. She hates a closed door, be it the front door or the door to the bathroom or balcony, regardless of whether anyone is on the other side of the door or whether she herself cares at all about the other side of the door.
She can also open doors, so we have to bolt the front door. Our bathroom doesn’t have a lock though, so we’re just waiting for an awkward incident there.
Same struggle, the other cats know to look to the other one as the resident little bandit, such little shits lol
In what world is the hierarchy NOT supposed to be
Door > Cat
?
Edit: its honestly not that bad aha. They’re generally pretty respectful, but they know to stay away during #2. That’s a hard ljne I had to draw
My cat is far too smart for me, which should be embarrassing, but she’s very smart. She once broke a glass bottle (with water in it, so no smells) on a tile floor, then pulled a bath mat over the shards so she didn’t hurt herself. But she also straight up hides things for fun sometimes.
No fucking way?! That’s hilarious.
Can I ask about the most important situations where you NEED this to be the case? Like pick your battles but when do you need to take up that battle aha?
Basically just the front door and the bathroom door, though we pee and shower with the door open, as long as nobody’s visiting. We’ve got a storage room that we’d like to not have to heat, but we can’t keep the door shut lol
Can you simply carve out catdoors where privacy isn’t necessary and simply more strenuously enforce it when it is? There must be a way. I don’t even know how I did it other than non-violently freakout and try to add a cue to the freakout for them to internalize that I can safely rehash when I need to reinforce it?
I’d love to, and we will when we’re in a more permanent place, but we’re in a rental with a scummy landlord right now. We’re looking for a new one, but it’s probably going to be until summer at least
Honestly, just like freakout (lovingly) a little and raise your voice a bit and usher 'em away without hurting or physically connecting and scold them a bit+put on a show so they know you’re pissed.
Cats do it ALL the time, the hiss and get pissy and like 30 seconds later its like nothing ever happened. You sort of have to have at least or more of a pair of balls than they do. Show 'em who’s boss and reward with treats strategically or when they voluntarily comply
Edit: my safe/trigger word for this is
Outta Dare (outta there) 😹
I’ll try that, it’s been mostly either ignoring her meowing or meowing back so far, which doesn’t exactly work well
The other thing I do is ask them point-blank in a disappointed voice
Why u do that? 😿
And I repeat it a couple times, really hamm it up and sort of resist them for a moment cuz they’ll want to rub up against your legs but they need a moment of seperation to realize that they’re doing wrong
I wish Izzy could stop eating when she’s full. If you put too much food down for her at once, she’ll eat it all and throw it up. She has to be fed by the teaspoonful about ten times a day or my world will be turned to cat vomit. “Ability to stop eating when full” would be a nice trick.
Screw that, get her a puzzle feeder with all the grooves like an ice-cube tray or something else that makes her “think”/“work” for it. I used to have a scarfer/gulper too but its slows her right the fuck down 😹
How about no/zero throwups lol
She’d scream herself to death while I was loading it.
That’s ok, let her dream and whine for a bit, its a small price to pay for changing her life
Taking the road less travelled often makes all the difference
You can get timed cat food dispensers.
Doesn’t help with her wet food. We have to feed that to her half a can at a time.
Well, to clean himself but now he does that and it’s rare he needs cleaning. He always cleans his paw before leaving the litter box on its walls so that’s not fixed.
Maybe to play on his own or chill if I dont want to play. If I work he somehow never bothers me, aside for the occasional “meow let’s play” moment here and there. But when I play games, or read, he just goes “hi motherfucker” and start meowing all the time and when he sees that meowing fails he decides that the best course of action is to jump on my television; it’s a 4k euro tv so you can imagine how funny it is, more so now that he scratched it a lot
So my choice goes to “stop fucking scratching my television”
Do you have another cat or is it him all by himself?
Just him
Have you ever entertained a friend for him?
Well, deep lore moment: he is engaged to my gf’s cat, though he has never met her
I dont know what that means lol
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Instead of marking his territory by pissing on things, I’d prefer if he wrote his name on a post-it note.
I wish you well in this endeavor
One of my friends in Finland has a couple of cats, one is fairly disinterested in people but the other loves to play fetch with her toys. It’s ridiculously cute.
God im jealous
I’d say to be careful what you wish for, because once the game has begun, it doesn’t end until the cat is bored. It’s impossible to resist the cute drop / sad little cat-activation-noise when you get distracted and don’t notice.
Could be right about that
To stop scratching my damn furniture.
Set up scratch posts next to or on your furniture.
We have done everything. He’s still intent on ripping up carpet and shredding sofas.
