The Problem of Cats’ Indoor Parkour
Cats, as our companion, have come into many families. However, we will encounter a variety of problems while raising cats, for example, cats go their own ways, they run everywhere, and they scratch and damage furniture. All these problems arise due to our lack of understanding the characteristics of cats, their habits, the proper guidance of their behaviors, as well as the reasonable setting of their living environment. Therefore, we should pay attention to the following aspects while raising cats:
Firstly, the owners should be familiar with the basic characteristics and habits of cats.
The basic characteristics of cats are: they are naturally active, energetic, agile, and sensitive to sound; they also have strong curiosity, developed hearing, and very strong territorial awareness; they like playing and climbing.
The basic habits of cats are: they like to sleep (they tend to sleep more during the day and stay awake at night); they have various sleeping postures; they like to interact with their owners, and they like hunting very much; they like to “watch” their owners, sometimes giving their owners "massage" (cats' kneading behavior); they often sharpen their claws and clean themselves by licking hair; they go to their own toilets and bury poops; they like to scratch leather ware.
Only by getting to know the above basic knowledge of cats’ characteristics and habits, can the owners better keep their cats.
Secondly, proper approaches should be adopted to correctly guide cats’ behaviors.
There are normal and abnormal behaviors of cats. What we should do is to encourage normal behaviors while restrain and weaken the abnormal behaviors, so that cats’ behaviors are moving to the right direction.
For example, it is quite common for cats indoors to run a lot, especially when the family raises more than one cat. This is mainly due to the fact that cats are very energetic, and they relieve pressure by doing so. Besides, with two or more cats together, they tend to chase, imitate, and play with each other. In this case, if not adjusted in time or the cats’ excitement hasn’t been transferred, these behaviors could be aggravated.
The adjustment method is: When the above situations occur, the pet owners should stop them in time with sounds, and try to transfer their excitement from chasing each other to the prepared balls of string, bells tied to a rope, small elastic balls or other toys. After a period of adjustment, these small toys should be tied around the cat house where cats can easily notice them, which would help form the trace reflection. At the same time, the owners could reward the cats with dried fish. By doing so several times, cats would not only overcome and weaken those bad behaviors but also enhance the interaction with their owners. Therefore, when raising cats, it’s very important for the pet owners to adjust their cats’ behaviors in time, so that they would behave according to our preference.
One more tip, when cats make a mess in the room, the owners should try not to clean up in front of the cat, because the cats would take this as a kind of interaction, which could be counterproductive.
Finally, the pet owners could weaken bad behaviors of cats by getting to know the preference of their cats and setting up their living environment according to their habits.
The setting up of living environment is directly relevant to the cultivation of cats’ habits. They should have their own beds(or cushion), which should be soft and comfortable, toilets, cat food and foodware(food and water should be separated), various kinds of toys(such as tumblers, toy mouse, ball turntable, hanging feather cat sticks and balls of string ), scratching posts, hair brush(and cleaning wipes) and cat cage if necessary.
To sum up, a full understanding of cats’ characteristics and habits as well as the proper set up of their living environment would greatly help cultivate cats’ good habits.
