I might have to get rid of kitten!!!!

HELP!!!!!!!!!

My 3 month old kitten, Cali, is jumping on and climbing on EVERYTHING and breaking things. She jumps one the tables. She jumps on shelves. In the garage, she somehow gets on to the rafters. She is just climbing and jumping on EVERTHIG!!!! If we cant find a way to keep her off the tables and shelves, etc. my grandpa says that we are going to have to get rid of her !!!!! PLEASE HELP!!!!! We adopted her and her "sister" Ripley (5 months) 2 months ago. I dont want to have to take her back to the shelter.

Can ANYONE HELP!!!!!!

If we have to get rid of Cali, both our kittens will be DEVESTATED!!!! Ripley and Cali are VERY BONDED to eachother. I HATE to break up a pair. SO PLEASE for the sake of Ripley and Cali ( and me) PLEASE HELP!!!!!

She's bored & wants attention. You need to make sure she has plenty of toys. Play interactively with her at least 2x a day for a minimum of 15 minutes each time.

Do you have a cat tree? If not, get one pronto! Also, she's only 3 months old, and is being a normal kitty. Put breakable things away or out of her reach, behind closed doors.

Stephanie

That's perfectly normal behaviour for a kitten. What did you expect?! Kittens do run around, climb on things and generally cause havoc! Most calm down as they get older, although some stay kittenish for most of their adult life.

As the others have said, get her lots of toys and play interactively with her as much as you can. Swap the toys around as she'll get bored with the same toys every day. Give her activity centres she can climb on, boxes and paper bags she can play with etc. And put anything breakable out of her way!

Originally Posted by stephanietx

Do you have a cat tree? If not, get one pronto! Also, she's only 3 months old, and is being a normal kitty. Put breakable things away or out of her reach, behind closed doors.

Stephanie

Click to expand...

This is IBelongInTheZoo's sister. we do have a cat tree for both kittens to play on and we have LOTS of toys for them to play with. We play with the kittens for several hours a day and they spend the rest of the time chasing and tackeling each other.

As for putting the breakables away, we cant. We have had our house for sale for 14 months and it still hasn't sold yet (it may happen this week though). When we first put our house on the market, a stager came over and made the house look appealing to other people. She put out A LOT of my grandmas hummels and Ylladros on display. She also set up the dining room with china plates and cristal glasses out. When my realitor comes over every week, she makes sure everything is just the way the stager had it.

By the way, after we posted the thread, we began clicker training both kittens. We only did it for about 10 minutes for the first time. Ripley, the older kitten, caught on real quick. I'm sure with a little more time, practice and patience, Cali will catch on too.

I'm afraid it's normal kitten behaviour because i'm going through the same thing, but i know it won't last forever.

Can you not put the breakables away and get them back out when someone comes to view the house because that's what i did. Either that or you confine them in a spare room, but one that's roomy enough to chase each other about.

That's the way a kitten rolls!! I would say that you need to either contain her when you can't supervise, or try to tire her out. Just having toys isn't enough. With an energetic kitten you need to be interactive, make her chase a string toy or a red laser dot. Poor baby, she's bored.

I hope the clicker training helps.

At 3 months they are still young and its natural to do those things. We got Charlie at 4 months and he was confined to one room for about a month total (introductions, etc.) He was supervised when left out.

I would advise you to confine the kitten when you are not there to supervise. When she's playing outside of the room, get her involved in interactive things and wear her out so she doesn't do as much climbing.

Do you have a good sturdy treehouse (minimum of 4 feet tall) that she can run and jump around on?

Originally Posted by Thezookeeper

As for putting the breakables away, we cant. We have had our house for sale for 14 months and it still hasn't sold yet (it may happen this week though). When we first put our house on the market, a stager came over and made the house look appealing to other people. She put out A LOT of my grandmas hummels and Ylladros on display. She also set up the dining room with china plates and cristal glasses out. When my realitor comes over every week, she makes sure everything is just the way the stager had it.

Click to expand...

If you can't put the breakables away, you're going to have to limit where the kittens go. Is there a way to only have breakables on display in one room where the doors can be closed?

I'm going to nth all the other folks that kittens are just going to be this energetic and the only away to make sure they don't break things is to make sure they can't get to things that will break.

My 2 aren't even kittens and they still accidentally knock stuff over when they're busy playing.

There are those little can things with the spray and buzzer that you can get at a petstore to keep them off of counters. Maybe try those? I think they're like $25 each though. Otherwise you're going to have to lock them up and watch them closely when they are out, no reason to get ride of a kittne over this because it will most likely outgrow it's craziness.

When Moose was a kitten (he's now 7) I went through the same thing. He used to swing pictures on the wall, tried to walk inside picture frames on the wall, climbed curtains, walked across the shower curtain rod and so much more I can't remember it all. I just put all valuables/breakables away and although he did still knock down a few things, he grew out of it. He still has flashes of kitten behavior, but nothing close to what he did as a youngster.
Kitten-proof your house the best you can; the "crazies" usually don't last too long.

I'm currently using a kitty training method myself (and I've been clicker training too) but.. I have one Bengal kitten and one Tonk kitten (the bengal is 9 months, but that doesn't stop her).

What I've been using is this: Go to the store (dollar store or what have you.. I got mine at Target for .99 each). Get those little plastic place mats. Get double sided masking tape *or* sticky paws from your pet store. I believe the double sided masking tape is cheaper. Put the double sided masking tape on the placemats. Pull off the backing. Make them fairly close together so that it's not easy to step in between the pieces of tape on the placemat. Now... put the placemats on all the surfaces you don't want them to jump on. You might start out putting it on the counter for a few days. Then after a few days, move it to another area. Obviously you'll want to start with the areas you want to keep them off of the most, i.e. the areas with the breakable stuff.

They don't like it when things stick to their paws. So, they jump on the counter. They land on the tape. They don't like it, they associate their paws sticking with jumping up on that surface, and they eventually stop doing it. It will probably take more than a try or two. I'd also try to make sure that they can't see the placemats from the ground (because then they will realize when they're not there, there's no sticky paws). Leave them in place for awhile, then try removing every other one, and if they don't jump up, then remove a few more, etc, till they're all gone.

I know you said you'd been playing with them, but I wanted to recommend two toys. One is called "da bird". Mine will leap and throw themselves around, and if this toy can tire my crew out, it has a pretty good chance of tiring yours out (although, I do have to play with them for 45 minutes). Fly it through the air, let the kitties leap and leap and leap for it, have them chase it across the ground.. fly it low and let them chase it.. they'll go nuts. You can find those at www.go-cat.com.

The other toy you want to look at is the catdancer, which mimics a bug. www.catdancer.com Mine also love this, although this one is more of a mind exercise, not a physical one, but cats need both.

Make sure you let the cat "capture" it's prey numerous times, to the point of letting it lie there dead for a half a minute or so. They get very frustrated if they never win.


I will note that the placemats are working wonderfully for my crew. They're slightly a pain in the butt, but not as much of one continuously having a cat on the counter.

Two tipped over lamps, many broken candles (in candlesticks), a lightbulb and glass shade from chandelier on the carpet!, broken vase that was on the shelf in the spa tub, small tears in a accordian window shade, two potted plants dug in weekly, HMMMMMM. Have I forgetten anything? It doesn't matter. Yesterday she was riding in the wheelbarrow while my husband was pushing it in the yard. How cute is that? Long Live Kittenhood.