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Indoor Cat? Outdoor Cat? Why Choose?

Cats climbingChristine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT-KA, Katherine Ayres, PhD

We know that outdoor cats live shorter lives subject to disease and injury, yet many cat owners believe that their cats cannot be happy unless they go outside. I think one of the reasons people believe this is that many cats suffer from environmentally deprived environments without their owners even knowing they could be doing more for their cats. The added benefit is that spraying/marking, aggressive behaviors, excessively rough play and scratching of furniture and walls which are common complaints from owners of indoor cats can be helped or eliminated by following our recommendations.  Try some of these  ideas and see if they don’t make you and your cat happier:

Climbing/Viewing: If you live in a multi-cat household, providing vertical territory is especially important. Providing climbing opportunities can help alleviate cat/cat aggression and spraying/marking problems. Cat window perches, towers and condos allow your cat to jump and climb, which is especially appreciated near a window.  If you shop around, you might be surprised, cat trees have come a long way. For fashion conscious owners, we recommend installing floating shelves in a stair step pattern. Shelves can be purchased to match any decor. When you bring a new cat tree into the house or install shelves, spray them with Feliway to help your cat relax around the new item. You can further encourage your cat’s use of trees or shelves with catnip or treats. [Read more...]

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Urine Trouble

Louisa Beal, DVM

Wally was a nine-year-old male Persian.  His owner was dismayed because he had recently begun urinating in the house.  He was destroying her carpeting.  Wally had not only missed the litter box several times, but had urinated on the owner’s bedspread, her clean clothes in the laundry basket and the rug in front of the sofa.  Wally was about to get a one-way ticket to dreamland.

House soiling is an unacceptable behavior.  It is one of the most common reasons for owners seeking behavioral advice.  So, what should we do?  Confine him to a room with a vinyl floor and a litter box? Put him on meds for a marking behavior?   Catch him in the act and squirt him with a spray bottle?

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Adopting a New Cat

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT-KA

National Adopt a Cat Month means that many of us will either be introducing a new cat to our home or at least contemplating whether adopting a cat is a good idea. Cats are very different from dogs in that regardless of whether you’ve socialized your cat well as a kitten with other cats/dogs, not all cats adapt well to a new feline family member. The good news though is that most cats learn to adapt and even enjoy one another if introduced properly and over a long enough period of time. Here are the tips we give owners for increasing the chances of a successful cat adoption:

Kittens

What is cuter than a kitten? One that gets off on the right paw! Set up a management area for your new kitten which contains food, litter box, hiding places and toys. Do not let your kitten have free access to your home since it’s easy for a young kitten to get lost and forget where their litter box is located. Over a few weeks, slowly increase the range of your home you make available to your kitten. As you expand the area of your home, add additional litter boxes. There should be at least one litter box per cat, per floor. If you catch your kitten using the litter box or scratching at their scratching post, give them a treat or a play session with you when they’re finished. Reward the behavior you want and you’ll get more of it!

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Work It Kitty!

Katherine Ayres, PhD

The work-to-eat movement has grown steadily in zoos and is really starting to take hold for companion animal owners as well.  For those who are not familiar with work-to-eat, the theory behind it is that cats and dogs evolved as predators and predator/scavengers respectively and should not eat food in a bowl that is handed to them.  Instead, they should indulge their instincts to search, pounce, scratch, grab, manipulate and bite “prey” and/or receive food during training sessions.  Therefore, a number of products have sprung up commercially for dogs and cats to work for their food.  However, it seems like dog owners are more familiar with this concept.  Stuffed Kongs, Bob-O-Lots, Tug-A-Jugs and Tricky Treat Balls have really started to catch on for dog owners, which is fantastic.  But did you know that cats greatly benefit from work-to-eat too, especially indoor cats!

Here are some signs that your cat is bored and could use more environmental enrichment: [Read more...]

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Cat Litter Box Problem Solved: Texture Aversion

Katherine Ayres, PhDiStock_000003487147XSmall

Eva came to us at 3 months after being a “stray at large” in Lynnwood, WA.  She was sweet, extremely social, fun to play with and of course had a healthy obsession of watching birds out the window making that amusing chatter noise.  Her litter box habits for the most part were good.  We had her using a flushable litter made from plant material.  I liked that it wasn’t clay based and flushing made it convenient.  However, occasionally Eva would poop outside her box if we left a towel on the floor or there was a particularly fuzzy rug, but these instances were rare and she was young so I didn’t think much of it.  Then, when she was about one year old, she started pooping outside the box pretty regularly, but never peeing outside the box. [Read more...]

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I Have Four Cats, One Dog, and Two Pet Peeves

Louisa Beal, DVMPet Peeves

I like to consider myself a fairly non-judgmental person.  People may do things to their pets that I think are horrible, but I cannot judge them, since, in the past, I have done most of those things myself.  We all grow and learn and change.

However, there are two things that get under my skin and make me want to slap folks upside the head.  Or at least sting them with my sarcasm.  All of my caring, nurturing and willingness to help simply fly out the window.  I end up jamming my fist down my throat so that I don’t say anything that I will regret.

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Kitten Socialization

Jim Ha, PhD, CAABKitten closeup

Cats, like all mammals, are social creatures.  While cats are far less social than dogs, to think of cats as asocial is wrong.  The degree of social behavior and the ability of an individual to adapt to a changing social environment varies with species (certainly cats are less social than dogs), breed (Bengal cats are less social than domestic short-hairs), and individual personality.  Even individual personality is dependent on factors like genetics (or what we often call temperament) and learning or socialization.  So genetics play a big role, at the species, breed, and then individual level.

A recent study looked at how young cats reacted to familiar and unfamiliar people and to a novel object, and showed that the social personality of the father (genetics) as well as the degree of early socialization (learning) influenced the later degree of social stress in human interactions, but only the genetics influenced the (nonsocial) response to a novel object.  This is a nice example of the interaction between genetics and learning.  And of course, this is true of all mammals.

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Tips For Getting Your Cat To The Veterinarian

Miles Bensky, BA, CTC

Cat VeterinarianWhen I read the September edition of the Animal Behavior Associates newsletter, I found a statistic that was quite alarming. It was estimated that 36% of the 81 million cats in the United States did not see a vet in 2006. Why are so many cats not receiving regular healthcare? Regular checkups are key to preventing future health conditions and potential causes for behavioral problems. It is likely because many people find trips to the vet to be a nightmare. The whole occasion is simply too stressful for their cat and for themselves. Therefore, I thought I would outline some basic tips about making a trip to the vet less traumatic on your feline friend.

For your cat, a trip to the veterinarian involves dealing with one stressful situation after another. They are put in a carrier, loaded into a car, and driven away from their familiar surroundings. They then arrive to an unfamiliar building full of the smells, sounds, and sights of other animals… and all of this just to be handled and examined by strangers. All these unfamiliar factors cause some level of anxiety in your cat, and that [Read more...]

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Cat behavior and misbehavior

Jim Ha, PhD, CAABcat behavior

Cats are a mystery to many of their owners, perhaps more so than dogs. Dogs are social, like we primates, and so we can often understand their need for attention, the reward of social contact and praise, and even, at a deeper evolutionary level, perhaps a lot of their signals and communication. But cats – symbols of the unknown, the dark worlds, the places where humans feared to tread – why do cats mystify us so?

One answer is probably their lack of sociality. Modern domestic cats are descended from relatively solitary species of wild cat (all cats but the lion are considered far to the solitary extreme of the sociality continuum). So cats do not respond to social signals or rewards in the same way that we do, or our oh-so-social dogs [Read more...]

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