Weather: frightful. Fire: nonexistent.
| It's snowing again! I'm such a sucker for snow, even though I just had to trudge 20 minutes to campus and back at an ungodly hour. The snow made the trudge a bit cheerier. I finally bought batteries for my camera, so this means that you, my dear readers, will now be able to look upon the glory that is The Boyfriend Sweater:  Yes, very unimpressive looking. I'm happy with the way it's turning out, but I'm beginning to wish I'd just made him a chunky yoke sweater instead. It's slow going, and I'm gaining a new respect for knitters who a) design their own sweaters, and b) knit such gorgeous and detailed patterns. I doff my snow-drenched hat to you, ladies! In other news, we're still not sure about keeping the kitten. He's just a little bit too much of a handful, and we don't have the time (or the patience) to give him the attention he needs. We have two plans now. Plan 1: Return him to the shelter and take home the pretty adult cat we were making friends with. Plan 2: Adopt a second cat, an adult who would hopefully calm him down and keep him occupied while we're gone. We're trying not to feel guilty about returning him, telling ourselves that he's an adorable kitten and will be adopted quickly. This is probably true, but I don't like the pet transforming into a commodity or merchandise that the return/exchange implies. But he's driving us crazy and tearing up our furniture, blankets, and clothes. Suggestions, cat owners? |
posted by Sarah at 10:13 AM
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Sarah said ... (11:00 AM) :
post a commentOh dear, yes they are pretty active when they're little and they do claw stuff. I would phone the shelter you got him from and discuss it with them.
I'm sure they can either offer advice for coping with him or will be happy to let you bring him back if you don't feel you can cope with him. They may even be *keen* to swap your kitten for an adult cat if adults are harder to rehome.
Urk, I do sympathise. Trouble and Morgan were a complete pain when they were little. I think having two of them helped (especially as they're indoor cats and we're out all day) because they could take their boisterousness out on each other.
We didn't have too much hassle with clawing, but their constant peeing on our bed drove us half demented.
They're little terrors, sometimes. I don't know how long he's been in the house, but if he's acting a bit scared and nervy, rather than just kitteny and boisterous, you might want to try - and this sounds far worse than it is - closing him in the bathroom for a few hours. He's probably just come from a tiny territory in the shelter to a much bigger space, and that means lots of new places to assert his dominance over, and lots of potential dangers to protect himself and the territory from. If it's only been a couple of days, closing him in the bathroom will make his job much more manageable, as he can make that his own, and leave the rest of the house until he's got a secure base to start from. If you do confine him to the bathroom, put the litter box and his cat carrier in there, and spend lots of time in there with him, so you get to be part of the territory too.
If it's been more than a few days, or if he's just really seeking someone to play with *all the time*, then this probably won't help. Ring the shelter and discuss with them - if he's a kitten there'll be plenty of people after him...
Oh, and... if you do close him in the bathroom, especially overnight, make sure the toilet lid is fastened down (our had duct tape on in for a few weeks) and anywhere else that he could get in to water trouble is sorted out. It doesn't *have* to be the bathroom, of course - if you've another little room, or a good big closet with a light, that would do too.
Hmmmm, the bathroom, eh?
Tempting as it sounds, I think he's just kitteny and very social. He wants constant attention, and we're too busy to play with him every second of the day. He does get a lot of attention, but we're more the petting-and-cuddling kind of owners than the running-around-playing kind. We may have to evolve a bit.
He'd be freaking out rather than cuting out if it was a territory thing. In which case, all I can say is 'they get better once they get spayed', which may not be any consolation for a few months...
If you have hard floors, ping-pong balls work wonders, you only need to throw one every ten minutes or so.. Another cat is ok, but an adult may find him too much as well, we had to rescue three kittens recently, and our adult cat wanted nothing to do with them. We've had to separate them until the kittens have homes. In the meantime, they wear each other out and have started attacking the dog..
Well, he's starting to learn what he can't do. Unfortunately, this is mostly restricted to chewing on electrical chords and stealing our lunches. He still wants to play ALL THE TIME, but since we bought a laser pointer it's been a lot easier to tire him out before bedtime.