| [home] [news] [pics] [movies] [links] [friends] [ideas] [support] [logs] |
We have two cats which are surprisingly hard to train to not do certain things. For instance, one of our cats loves to jump on my wife's bureau and regularly knocks her jewelry off on the floor where it can easily get lost (or someone step on an earring unexpectedly). The problem is that we can only catch him at it when we are nearby and usually only catch him jumping down. Cats have no way to associate you yelling at them to an action unless it is an immediate and consistent scolding. He also loves to walk on other furniture and play with what's on top. A slightly more worrisome problem is our other cat, which decided that if the litter box was not emptied every day he would simply find somewhere else to go. Luckily, it was always the same place, so all we had to do was discourage him from going there to fix that behavior. But how to do so?
Enter the "Cat Trap". A good friend of mine that I used to work with on the Porky Team(hi Stan!) mentioned that his cats would always claw his furniture up. So he put some double sided tape where they would claw and they quickly stopped. They hate to have their claws stick to something. So.... armed with that knowledge, I put together something about the size of a mouse trap (hence the similar name). Take a piece of cardboard about 2x4 inches and put a piece of tape on one side, sticky side up. This can either be done with double-sided tape or by looping a bit of tape. Packing tape works best (hence the width of the cardboard).
Armed with these Cat Traps, cover the surface you do not want the cats to enter. The best results are if it is a surface they have to jump onto but cannot see what is up there. We knew it was working right away when we heard a thump and then "thwap-thwap-thwap" as our cat ran from the room with one attached to his foot. He ran down the stairs, back up and then down again before I could figure out what the heck all the racket was, corner him and remove the trap. Suffice to say, he doesn't go up on the bureau anymore. Repeat for each place where you don't want cats. After the first experience, they learn pretty quickly not to go where they see the traps. After a couple weeks, remove the traps and the cats will continue to associate the area with distress. Who said you can't train cats?