clubber – Member
You have to either pay for cattery or get a neighbour/friend to feed them when you go away at the weekend.
Oh and based on our experience, if they get excessively stressed by something (eg next door’s cat or similar) they may start pissing or crapping in the house to mark their territory..
These are the main problems as I see it.
We got our cat from a rescue home and she was fine for a while, but then started marking her territory all over the house. We tried loads to stop it, but never really did.
Moved house recently & touch wood – she has completely stopped. Like a different cat though.
Coming home to find that days’ contributions to the household piled up on the dining room floor – 2 birds, 1 mouse, a nests’ worth of mouse pups and a toad.
Bringing me a live (very) lizard at 8.30 on a Saturday evening just as I’d cracked open a beer.
Playing volleyball in the lounge with mouse pups and shrews.
Shredding leather sofas.
you know this forum used to be a place you could come and ask questions about bikes, routes and technique. nowadays its just internet idiots posting weird pictures of cats with bad spelling on them.
This is what you can expect.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ffwDYo00Q[/video]
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gknp-8ltmE&feature=related[/video]
Ignore the you can’t leave them for a weekend. Get an auto feeder, two pockets with timer release. You can get really expensive 5 pocket ones too! Although much cheaper and less disruptive than a cattery.
I’ve left mine for four days over christmas and they were fine. They don’t always travel well but I have had them over at the folks at Christmas before and they were fine!
Barring wicker stuff, is it easy to discourage furniture scrattling? The wee bagger had managed to pull up some carpet overnight as I guess he wanted out of the cat room into the rest of the house, where the good stuff happens.
Sheeet. I have descended into the world of lolcats. There is no hope.
I should add that our cat was fine for two days with just food left out. However we wanted to be gone during the week as well (work) which meant that for the 18 months of that assignment we hardly ever went away at the weekends, because two nights int he week then anotehr two at the weekend wasn’t fair on him. We had no catflap.
We go away for a week at a time with no worries, just put down a ginormous bowl of iams, an even bigger bowl of water and leave a window open. The food never runs out cos they prefer wildlife, preferably endangered.
I dont think the ungrateful brutes even notice we’re gone.
They’ll scratch anything! My Maine Coon even scratched a really rough leather suite from running across it with his claws out my wicker CD rack is wrecked down one side and she also has a go at the wood floors where its uneven (proper old floor rather than laminate)
You could try the water-pistol trick worked for my friend quick squirt if he went to scratch the sofa thing was he just waited till she was out of the room……
When we go away we give the neighbours a key and they pop round in the morning and evening to let em in or out and for feeding times, apparently if they don’t come round on time the cats go round theirs to Remind them
They ignore us for a day when we come back as well
I should also add that our cat never scratched a thing in the house except to get our attention, and even then he only pricked the sofa a bit never causing damage. He scratched the crap out of the shed and fence posts though 🙂
It’s a bad idea to have a cat in case you feel compelled to purchase a tank of helium.. and then inflate your cat like a balloon for tying to your wrist when you have to go into town to pick up your dry-cleaning and grab a few bits and bobs from the Co-op..
I don’t think it is. I am mistrustful of that artificial stuff. And never buy Iams, it’s like smack for cats, they go mental demanding tons of it from you and you have no choice but to give it to them, and then they get fat.
I guess it depends on the cat. With the one that’s adopted me, I just fill up a hopper of iams every few weeks and it helps itself a bit if it’s passing it. Though this time of year it seems to live mostly on baby rabbits and birds so takes even less than normal.
don’t let them leave their mother too soon as she teaches them about litter trays and hunting.
And how to clean themselves. One of our cats, Binky (short for Bianchi)’s nickname is stinky binky because he was a rescue cat, saved from a bag and a nearby river at a very young age.
Fleas, sick, dead animals, sick, garden now devoid of all birds that used to be there, feathers, sick, fights in the middle of the night….Pain in the ass
If you are going to feed it Dried food, I can thoroughly recommend leaving it plenty of water, we lost our old cat to kidney disease, it lived on dried food we thought it got enough water, but it might not of had enough.
Cats are ace. There’s no down side. From time to time they may even allow you to feel like you’re the one in charge in the relationship. Maybe. Not often though
Cats are the best pet. I have six of them in my life (not all stay with me!)
Yes they have a killed a bird each in the past but (mainly as they were magpies and they were ill afterwards) they don’t bother with birds at all (i’m sat here typing this as a blackbird is hopping around the garden right near where one of the cats is lying)
The only downsides i’ve come across are the odd occasion when they get stuck in a tree and when they walk across your keyboard!
These 2 are abut 3 months old now and getting big!
Two of the above also play fetch with a ball of paper or foil, they run to fetch it, run back and drop it in my open hand 😀