Coping with Cats

Yes on all these points. Although I never had to resort to use spray bottles or hissing to enforce the rules.

Use their name often (they love that). Also surprisingly sniffing things is everything to them. When playing do not let them use their nails (Just saying ouch and immediately stop playing is enough to point out you do not approve).

My cat will tap my hands when playing, but rarely use his nails, only by accident.

Make sure that there are multiple spots in the house where they can sharpen their nails. A single scratching pole is probably not sufficient.

First we built a cat tree, and it was good. Then we bought auction cup window perches, and they were even better. Then we built a catio and it was the best thing a cat could possibly imagine and their minds were blown. Then we got chickens that they could watch from these places and oh boy!!!

I have pretty bad allergies to most pets and never grew up with them and find them. Apart from the itching and eczema, I don't really feel like I'm in a home when pets are around. For others though, I think it's the complete opposite. It must be with what we grow up with.

We build homes to keep bad organisms (pests, thieves) out and good organisms (family, friends, babies, pets, plants) in. Species is relatively orthogonal. As long as the organism is a net value-add, in it goes.

This didn't "seem" right to me, so I went looking. Seems like a little over 2/3 of US households have pets. (I couldn't easily find worldwide figures.)

[0] - https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-pet-stat....

Took about 6 months before a local cat adopted us as it's preferred owners, most likely due to the lack of another cat having claimed our yard as its territory. This new cat is the one I've referred to in a previous cat / pet related HN story.

Like... do you hold him over the litter box and squeeze or something?

I wasn't ready for this - my kitten started doing this lately (or I have to seal off the room I'm working on, ignore her pleas and let her go sleep in a kids bed).

My boy Dudley is the same. It’s so funny I’ll be in the living room watching TV and at a certain time he’s like “okay good night” and wanders off to the bedroom. He sleeps through the night, but will be up at dawn to watch the birds outside through the window.

One great thing about pets is the new people you get to meet.

my now 2-year-old cat is exceedingly and surprisingly mindful of all of my what must seem to be arbitrary to her rules around tables and scratching and such (whereas my former two cats were always sneaking behind my back and breaking the rules). the only one she routinely disobeys is munching on the plants. but that's partially my fault, as i always take too long to replenish the cat grass for her.

there's also the issue of housecats killing a staggering number of birds each year. tbh, this is not really a factor that weighs heavily on our decision, but it's something to think about.

finally, many cats are rescues for whom living freely outdoors was never an option. imo, it's better to be an indoor cat in a loving home than a dead cat.

Additionally, feral cats are awful for native bird and small mammal populations. Your cat will probably hunt and eat small mammals and birds if you let it roam freely.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife

I've had quite a few cats in my life.

In Belgium (w/ my parents) we had a (big) garden and our cats could always freely roam outside. Some of them stayed near, others disappeared for many hours and probably went relatively far.

It's true that they are fantastic hunters: it's in their genes. Even if they won't eat the prey, the amount of birds, mice, even small rabbits they returned was staggering. Cats are dicks though, they kill for fun and kill billions (?) of other animals every year. And won't eat them.

We also had a neighbour that thought it was fun to shoot animals (including cats) in his garden. Took a while before the neighbourhood found out why cats kept disappearing (having a cat come home with a tiny lead bullet wound gave it away). There's also roadkill and thieves. I'd say for a long period (before we found out someone was shooting cats) cats we disappear quite regularly (every 2-3 years a cat would never come home).

But I still agree cats should be allowed to roam outside: they'll be less bored, less destructive, and less annoying.

I have now moved to Singapore and adopted a lost kitten ("Tofu") roughly 2 years ago and an abandoned ~1 year cat ("Taro") (left alone on a 7th floor balcony without food in 30°C sun while the owners were out of town for several days) roughly a year ago.

Cats in Singapore commonly "fall out of the sky" -- meshing and protecting windows is not that common here, yet. Cats (including mine) love to sit on the ledge and stare outside, and once in a while they slip. I've moved from a 12th floor apartment to a 3rd floor apartment: in both cases you either keep the windows shut or make sure it's meshed up. It's a requirement here now before you're able to adopt a cat from a shelter. They come and physically inspect your home to make sure it's suitable, clear and big enough.

We're lucky both our cats are long-haired nice looking cats. There might be some pedigree in there, somewhere. We've had people randomly walk up to us and ask us how much we paid for the cats ($0) and if we'd be willing to sell them (no). That makes me believe if they were to walk alone they'd be stolen and sold off.

The abandoned-rescued cat is fine staying indoor -- he is pretty traumatised and scared of every tiny noise. The other cat we've taught from early on to walk with a leash.

We take her out anywhere between 1 to 3 times a day depending on whether she asks for it or not. Walks are unlike walking a dog: you follow the cat and the cat usually doesn't go very far (it'll often just sit in the grass and look at the birds/lizards). Once we reach a quiet area near the apartment I remove the leash, and she gets to hop or walk around a bit. She never goes far and actually waits for me. Needless to say it's a very quiet, green area here without roads and very little passer-by's.

So I'd say it really depends on the circumstances whether the cat should be allowed out (unsupervised). Yes, it makes sense as they are semi wild, but also a living cat is probably better than a dead cat.

FWIW we've started an IG account, just because. https://www.instagram.com/tofurawr/

In fact she loves going outside. She poops and pees outdoors, so the house doesn't smell. There are some wild areas near the house and she's all over those. She gets very, very unhappy when kept indoors.

She also needs at least 15-20 mins a day of play attention. Slap-the-bouncy-ball, chase-the-laser-up-the-stairs, hide-and-seek-in-the-tunnel, smack-the-ring-binder-spring-on-a-string - which she particularly likes, for some reason.

Enough stimulation and attention and she's a happy kitty. No angry biting, no 2am zoomies, no breakages, plenty of purrs and affection.

Where I live now, there's a fenced yard, but there's a busy highway a block away, a pack of coyotes that lives up the street, a couple owls that live in the yard, a few eagle's nests, there's regularly bears and racoons and a fair bit of forest just behind the yard.

His life as an indoor cat hasn't really given him the instincts to look after himself. He walks and lays out in thr open, doesn't really understand he can jump on things until he tries, doesn't hide from shadows or other things outdoor cats do to avoid dying.

He seems pretty happy getting to go out with the dogs and stuff though. He tends to stick by them and alerts when they do and stuff. He doesn't try to escape or anything unless we're going outside with the dogs, then he's right there at the door with them.

We did leave a window open one time recently and he jumped out. But he freaked himself out or something when he couldn't get back in. He was just lying under the window when I got home and went running back in as soon as I opened the door and wouldn't go outside for a couple days.

I'd be more concerned about cars and coyotes. ISTR the half-life of an outdoor cat is about 2 years.

My kids made a "compost jar" for a school project a few years ago. They took some soil, a bunch of rotting food waste, and earthworms and put it all in a jar. At some point, the jar was accidentally got left too close to a window and the worms got crisped and died. It took several days for us to notice. I threw that rotting dark concoction out in the garden.

Unbeknownst to me, the dog got out and—like dogs do—decided to gulp that whole pungent witch's brew down. It became very beknownst to me about ten minutes later when she threw the whole thing up on the brand new rug. We're talking a large puddle of hot garbage, rotting earthworms, dogfood, and bile. It was vile. The smell was heart-stopping. I have never cleaned up a mess so fast in my life.

Even so, cat poop is worse for me. It will make me gag instantly. Something about the fishy meatiness of it turns my stomach.

The smells the cat cares about are its pheromones/scent. Cats are highly smell-oriented (they don't taste food as much as smell it), so venting all that cat-smell outside could cause the cat to find other places to mark.

It is an interesting debate to have though. It probably depends how your waste water is processed.

There is definitely a non-negligible fraction of pet owners who do not empathize whatsoever with their pets, treating them instead as playthings for their own amusement.

I find useful to do that even in winter (maybe not in North Dakota winter).

It goes without saying they might wanna be alone every once in a while... I think that's normal cat behavior.

Every time I go through a unit (20 lbs) of cat litter, I dump the litter, clean and bleach the box, and rinse the hell out of it. Then, I place new litter. I'd say, approximately once ever 1.5 months.

None of the items listed in that article have happened in my experience to an actual real-world cat that I have seen. The article is full of suppositions. There are no actual facts listed.

The first thing that I noticed in that article were all the pictures of toilet paper that cats had ripped off of the toilet roll. All one has to do is turn the roll in the other direction, and cats no longer do that. But, the writer seemed less interested in information than in filling words for a story.