Is your kitty the terror of the house? Is it always digging through the trash, climbing the curtains, teasing the furniture to pulp, jumping onto counter tops and tables and much, much more?
At first, it may have seemed cute to watch your kitten try to climb the living room curtains and reach the ceiling. A regular clown in the family as you all laughed at it's lovable antics. But this soon turned into a lot of frustration for you when you suddenly realized that this might be an unstoppable cat that seemed to get into everything.
Fear not, pet owner! There are a few things you can do to discourage this type of hyper behavior that has your cat running the show.
Curtains
Replace with tension rods for the time being. When kitty begins to climb the curtains, they come tumbling down and scare the cat witless. It will not take the kitty very long to make the connection. After awhile, you can replace the tension rods because kitty will be too afraid to try curtain climbing again.
Furniture
If you have a scratching post of some kind for kitty, but it is still teething up the furniture to shreds, then begin to take the kitty to it's scratching post and praise it for using this. If this is still not working out quite right, get a bottle of spray from the pet store to use on the furniture that your cat will not like. Also, keep it's scratching post in the same room so it will naturally want to use this instead of the furniture.
Countertops
Leave enough empty cans and such on your counter tops so when kitty jumps up on them, they fall over and clatter. Cats hate loud sounds like these and will run from them. In time, your kitty will stop trying to jump up on the counters.
Trash Containers
If your kitty is a trash digger, then put a lid on the whole thing. The same goes for cats that like drinking water from the toilet bowl. This one is easy.
Setting Boundaries
Why is your cat running the show at your house? You may have one of those frisky bundles of fur that just has a ton of energy and likes to seek out adventure where the kitty can find it.
All cats want affectionate attention given to it. They want this praise, so give it as a reward for doing what is right. Stop trying to reprimand kitty. This is still attention being paid to it. Some cats are real attention getters. If you give it positive attention for behaving but do not give it the emotionally charged, chewing out when it misbehaves, this will go a long way.
Get kitty some creative toys that it can exert some of it's energy over and use these to play with kitty. This is good cat training. This is positive reinforcement for your cat to want to play with it's toys instead of raising up the house.
