What's something good that happened today?

[atomicpaul]

Originally Posted by NopeNopeNopeNope [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yours actually plays with those toys? Jealous

I just spent another $6 on cat toys last weekend. Ernie batted them around for about 5 minutes, promptly forgot they exist for the rest of his life like the others, and will go back to eating my shoes when I’m not home…

See this? He loves chomping my shoes

save a beat up pair of shoes he likes to gnaw on. drench them in white vinegar.

might not work but it's cheap enough that it's worth a shot. cats also dislike aluminum foil but that gets expensive and awkward, plus it's visible. aluminum foil can be useful for counter-surfing dogs.

i used to do something similar with directing young dogs that like to chew on things. find a flavor the dog dislikes, make it so certain things taste like that. passive training methods such as this can be pretty effective.

[NopeNopeNopeNope]

Originally Posted by atomicpaul [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

save a beat up pair of shoes he likes to gnaw on. drench them in white vinegar.

might not work but it's cheap enough that it's worth a shot. cats also dislike aluminum foil but that gets expensive and awkward, plus it's visible. aluminum foil can be useful for counter-surfing dogs.

i used to do something similar with directing young dogs that like to chew on things. find a flavor the dog dislikes, make it so certain things taste like that. passive training methods such as this can be pretty effective.

Hmm I could try that. I don’t have white vinegar just apple cider vinegar which I drink daily. So I’d have to buy some

I have a bit of a system already in place:

- Nice new running and hiking shoes that cost $150 I keep locked in the spare bedroom and only take them out to run or hike and then put them away after. This is to also stretch their lifespan by not having me use them for walking anywhere

- There’s two sets of shoes I leave out, they are former nice ones that have just become worn out at this point. The most chewed ones are my official gym shoes. These are the ones I wear when I have 3 45lb plates on each side of the bar doing squats. Because I looked it up, and putting a ton of weight on yourself while wearing shoes also smashes down and wears out those shoes faster. So I only use the shittiest of the shitty shoes for lifting/gym

- The slightly chewed but still mostly ok pair becomes my walking around shoes

What I really would like is to stop him from clawing up my new nice faux leather couch I got as a hand me down. I yell at him when he tries to claw the sides, but he is allowed to claw other furniture like a seat near the door I use to put shoes on which is the same kind of material as the couch, so I’m sure that’s confusing. He of course has a scratching post in his room with the littler box which he has ignored all his life……..

[NopeNopeNopeNope]

…

[magnetaress]

Nala is currently protecting my one good foot r now with her tail wrapped around it

[Ciderpress]

Raccoons are such assholes. I feed a trio of feral cats and like 80% of their food goes to two huge fatass raccoons. Yet then they kind of become pets too, and I feel guilty for not feeding them cause they're fuckin cute and I'm easy to manipulate.

Don't feed stray cats in the first place is the lesson.

[atomicpaul]

Originally Posted by Ciderpress [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Raccoons are such assholes. I feed a trio of feral cats and like 80% of their food goes to two huge fatass raccoons. Yet then they kind of become pets too, and I feel guilty for not feeding them cause they're fuckin cute and I'm easy to manipulate.

Don't feed stray cats in the first place is the lesson.

there are two animals outside of cats and dogs i would like to have as a pet. a raccoon and a relatively small pig.

i once spent time around a semi-domesticated baby deer in this lady's apartment. it was very cute. i think it was some kind of situation where the mother had been killed and this woman was a vet tech and had taken it home to foster and eventually release, but i think deer that are used to humans probably aren't gonna last long around here.

[Ekco]

Originally Posted by Ciderpress [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Raccoons are such assholes. I feed a trio of feral cats and like 80% of their food goes to two huge fatass raccoons. Yet then they kind of become pets too, and I feel guilty for not feeding them cause they're fuckin cute and I'm easy to manipulate.

Don't feed stray cats in the first place is the lesson.

yeah, there's like 3 separate cat colonies in our neighborhood a group of ladies setup traps and gets them fixed then releases them which is good but everyone is over feeding them so we get raccoons, skunks and possums in our backyard from it plus the cats

my most recent indoor cat was one that wandered into the neighborhood for the food and was about to get his ass kicked by our colony until i scooped him up

[atomicpaul]

yeah, we had a leather sofa in the past. ragnar destroyed it over the course of about six months, back then he was the only cat. we now have a fiber costco sofa, but we still catch the little jerks clawing at it sometimes. we yell. they scatter. but we aren't always here. it's held up better than the leather sofa did, i think we've had it for like two years now.

we used to have these long strip-like sticker things to put on the corners of furniture that supposedly prevented clawing, but we found shaping aluminum foil (and maybe with some scotch tape to hold it up) to be fairly effective at first.

we try to direct them to claw at the tower, we found some calming spray on it shortly after we built it kinda helped them get used to it. our three also ignore most standalone scratching posts.

because our house is all laminate, we buy cheap rugs. they claw at these, sometimes, too. we don't stop them because they're cheap rugs. so far our sofa is still mostly presentable.

[magnetaress]

Spayed and neuter cats r good for controlling the stray/feral cat civ pops because they can be well fed healthy and territorial. The problem is when they aren't sterile.

[magnetaress]

I shower 🚿 again! Took less than a week this time.

Had to get the funky hospital smells off.