Posted on 09/23/2007 7:46:56 AM PDT by paulat
My neighbor’s cat bites, but it’s more a “love-bite” than a sign of agression.
I had to break Hobbes of biting. I’ve never seen a cat bite like she did. My first reaction was to slap her across the room, but I checked myself and used the remote from the TV to stick in her mouth and hold it there. It took exactly once. She’s never bitten since!
Wow. Your market there is better (as a buyer) than ours was 10 years ago.
We've never been that particular about houses -- our longest search was 3 weeks.
Although we did see a "We Want!" once and bought it. Great layout and beautiful touches, though the house turned out to be a lot of trouble. We had to sell it a few years later and downsize, leaving behind some sad memories. It was spooky though, nothing's ever gone right for anyone who lived in the house. The older couple who bought it from us soon divorced, for example. And after them...
As much as I want to stand pat and try to be part of a political solution for Conservatives in CA, in deference to my qwife and children, I’ve really stepped up the serious looking around Boise-Nampa ID.
There are MANY good options in that area WITH acerage, to boot. I’m in no BIG hurry, so I’ll stall for the “right” place (newer 5 & 3 on 5+ acres, no HOA, rural/semi-rural <$550K). Adjoining permanently undeveloped BLM land would be a plus.
I dream of being able to sit on my porch without being afflicted by the bumpa-thump of rap crap or the wail of half-drunk mariachis blaring out of the wondows of every other car that drives down the road.
I dream of having enough space for the kids to go “out back” and have ROOM to really run and play. Heck, even the dog and the cats would probably feel like they’d died and gone to Heaven.
Which could become reality with the wildlife around. Signs for missing cat are pretty common around here -- just another meal for a coyote, cougar or what have you. Just a little caution and they'll be fine.
Doesn’t need to be rural; I’ve expereinced THAT problem in the middle of Anaheim Hills.
Our cat “Pixie” was a refinery rescue kitten back in 1990. She came outta there almost six weeks old, all but totally feral, all teeth and claws. Another week and she’d have been beyond domesticating. My then-girlfriend (now wife) kept her at her place, and the little fuzzball would ambush my ankles every time I walked by. I patiently played “Mama Cat” with her, and cuffed her for her timerity, teaching her when it was not appropriate to claw and bite. In just a few weeks she cut way back on the tooth and claw action, and even let us scratch behind here ears. Briefly.
Pixie’s going on 17, now, and I’m the only human she really tolerates for long periods of time. She crawls under my comforter and sleeps the day away on my side of the bed. At night, if it gets past 10:00, she comes out looking for me, meowing and trying to herd me off to bed. Then, she crawls under the sheet and curls up next to me, or, if I lie on my back, she goes to sleep on my chest. She’ll condescend to allow other humans to pet her some, and she’ll buddy up with my wife if I’m not around, but I’m her favorite human.
I tried the “mom-cat” thing with Hobbes for the better part of the first three months I had her. She didn’t respond to that, though she did learn the word “no.”
Since I didn’t want to hurt her, and she didn’t want to learn not to use her teeth, I used the remote. It was the hardest thing I could find, and I just held it in her mouth.
As for the claws, I began to clip them early, then give her the vaseline. She hates the clipping but she will now eat the vaseline off my finger. And she doesn’t bite!
Not actually hurting Pixie when she was so little, was a big trick, but I figured out how to deliver a sort of half-swat/half-shove that would tumble her over without a sharp impact to her little bod. I’d flip her over, and she’d roll a foot or two across the carpet, and, before she could collect her wits, I’d scoop her up in my hands and give her a big, purring snuggle. Consistency in implementing that “training” was really what cracked the chestnut.
Initially, she’d respond to being hugged with another bout of teeth and claws, but, after a couple of weeks, that response turned into something more like play fighting than serious intent to do harm. She never did get to where she liked being picked up, much less being held for any length of time, and she always insisted that she be allowed to approach anyone new on her own terms, but she did get to where she wouldn’t bite at all, and wouldn’t break out the claws without giving fair warning, first.
That’s true. We have coyotes right in Seattle; back in the late 80s one made its way onto an elevator in the Federal Building downtown. But it’s saddening how many people lose their pets after moving out our way.
I would never in a zillion years hurt a small animal (including a small person.)
In fact, I trained as a veterinary office assistant, and had a dream of being a vet-tech. But I had to discard that due to prolonged illness.
There has never been a dog or cat that I couldn’t get close to, even those whose owners say the animal doesn’t like people. So I’m not about to hurt an animal who acts on instinct.
However, when the “mom-cat” methods don’t work, something a little stronger is needed. I only had to do it once. She is stubborn, not stupid.
I always figure if you don’t want your pets to be part of the food chain, or hit by a vehicle, or worse yet, fall prey to meaness, the best place to keep them is in the house, unless they are on leashes.
Hobbes and Calvin both have leashes, so we go outside every once in a while. They don’t like the wind, though...
Having a coyote in the elevator must have been a really freaky experience; for both man AND beast.
Many people have never lived in an area where natural predators are so intermingled with suburban, and even urban, development. Suddenly their cat’s missing, and they’ve no clue why. I grew up with it. My folks never made any special effort to keep our cats indoors at night, but that was back in the 1970’s when there was a great deal more undeveloped wildland adjacent to our neighborhood.
Ongoing development has altered that to where the ranges of wildland populations of both predators and prey more and more overlap developed areas. Wherever they hole up during the day, at night, the jackrabbits come out to forage, and the coyotes come out to chase them. When they can’t catch a jackrabbit, an unwary housecat will do just as well.
Our late Agnes was a rescue from the streets, and she had lots of quirks, including an inability to purr. However she was a good cat for almost 19 years, we think. She never scratched the furniture, probably because she reached adulthood without ever *seeing* furniture. Our friend who found her, and eventually gave her to us, spent his money on blacksmithing and pottery, and pretty much lived on the floor!
I think your trick with the remote was a stroke of genius, actually.
The only animal I’ve ever had respond negatively to my presence was a dog that had been abused by a neighbor kid. I’d met the dog when I was little, and had no problem with it. I saw the dog again a few years later, when I was about the age of its former abuser, and it attacked me. Fortunately, it only bit my thumb, and that not seriously.
I remember you saying that Agnes had been a rescue. Hobbes and Calvin have scratch pads and a post, so they don’t mess with the furniture.
They are upset, though, that I have storage under the bed and the big chair.... No room for them to hide.
Y’know, I really didn’t want to do it, but the remote was handy, and Hobbes attacked my hand from out of left field, and I grabbed the remote, and the kitten, and introduced them. All the while, I reinforced the word “NO.”
The next time she got frisky, and went to bite, she checked herself. It was almost as if she had experienced the remote again. You could see the idea of biting in her eyes, and then she stopped in her tracks, looked at my hand and shook her head, while backing away.
It was so funny, I almost fell on the floor!
I had a female calico when I was a boy. Early on, we taught her not to claw the furniture by putting her out of doors whenever she did it, which worked. She quit right away, and we never had any more problem.
Some years later, we went on an extended vacation, so we left her with my grandparents. They lived in a mobile home park and kept her indoors the whole time for fear she’d be disoriented and run off. About the third day of this confinement, the cat walked into the living room where they were sitting, walked right up to the corner of the sofa, pawed (not clawed) at it with both paws, then trotted right over to the front door, and meowed to be given her due “punishment.”
LOL!
Smart cat! Sounds like she was homesick!
Yes to all. Smartest cat I’d ever had; a great mouser, and just as patient and mellow as you could ever wish for; never bit or scratched at all except in play, and even that was gentle.
I could pick her up, lay her across my shoulders and walk around doing little chores, her and there, and she’d just stay put.
When she got older, she got to where she’d come to my bedroom window late at night and meow to be let in. I’d go open the front door and she’d trot righ in and go jump up onto the foot of my bed. She’d get situated on a corner, and stay there until morning when I got up to go to school.
Man...I just lost a post. I hit “Post” and got a “proxy server error” message, and that was the end of the line.
Now I’ll have to reconstruct it. Dang.
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