We adopted an 8 month old kitten around Christmas. From the beginning she kept us awake at night, this improved after a few weeks until we were away from home for a few days on business. Now she meows constantly and plays all night long. She has also now made a habit of playing with the litter box feces and putting them all over the place. We also have an 8 year old hangover and she seems to play with that too. How can we unlearn her this behavior? I’ve had many cats before, but never these problems. She is very lively in general and is constantly full of energy. She doesn’t go outside yet because of a dangerous road nearby, our hangover is allowed outside for a while every day.
Answer
Dear Saskia,
sounds like you have a teenage kitten in your house with lots of energy. Because she doesn’t go outside yet, she can’t enjoy herself there and she has to do that inside. So you will have to give her the chance to get rid of excess energy within her. You can do this in several ways:
-play: play with her several times a day for short periods (max. 15 min). You can also do this while doing the housework, for example by tying a long shoelace around your ankle. She will then follow you all over the house to get the lace and you can do your housework in peace. You can also play with her from your lazy chair, for example by playing with a fishing rod (bought or homemade, a stick with a string with a few feathers on it) or a laser light. Very handy after a long day at work. Remember that you can have a lot of toys, but they only become interesting to a cat when they move. A fake mouse is much more fun if it is thrown away by the owner.
-food enrichment: In the wild, cats would spend at least 6 hours a day hunting. A food bowl that they have to walk to is therefore very boring for a cat. An indoor cat is often bored to death. They eat a little, sleep, look outside, eat a little more… So not much action in their lives. You can change this by making your kitten work for her food. Hide kibble all over the house, build a tower of empty paper towel rolls and put kibble in it for her to fish out, fill a bowl with nuts or ping pong balls and put kibble in between, cut a few holes in a low container or tea box and fill with kibble… You can think of it as crazy as you can think of ways to keep her busy. Also very nice: throwing kibble one by one and letting her run after it. Or scatter kibble and let her scratch. If you hide kibble everywhere right before bed, she’ll have other things to do than keep you awake. Give it a try, but then put the container away of course. Build up slowly, you will see that she will quickly make the click that she has to search behind her food.
Good luck!
For more information about cat behavior you can also visit http://kattengedrag.forumup.nl
Answered by
Els Peters
Biology: cat behavior
Prinsstraat 13 2000 Antwerp
http://www.uantwerpen.be
.