Cable Chewing

Our 4 month old kitten is obsessed with chewing on cables. We hide them as much as we can, but both my husband and I are IT professionals and we just have a lot of cables. We generally don't let her around cables unsupervised, but if she's in the room while we're working she'll start messing with them sooner or later (despite the gazillion toys we have in here for her).

We've tried spraying them with the bitter stuff you get at pet stores, but she doesn't mind it and just keeps on chewing. At this point we can't even get her to let go of the cables once she starts, without physically moving her. She doesn't really react to squirt bottles or loud noises.

At some point she managed to chew clean through a headphone cable (not sure how or when, I was keeping an eye on her at the time!), and has also ruined a phone charger cable just between the time she got to it and the time we could pull her off it.

Any tips at all greatly appreciated....thanks!!

Cord covers would be a place to start. One example would be these, but there are many brands on the market. There are some tips here: How to Pet Proof Household Cables

Ditto - I have a 8 month old who has destroyed a cell phone charger and now a laptop cord by chewing them. I also hide everything I can but I cant keep her from behind the entertainment center (lots of wires). What can I do? The stopshock stuff you linked to is a good idea, looks like the online ordering is broken. Ill try picking up clear thin tubing from the hardware store and create my own.

While making cords safe from chewing is important, you can also help to train kitty not to chew on them by redirection. Mochapenguin - the four month old is probably teething - if you work on redirection now, it may stop after her adult teeth are in.

So in addition to protecting kitty from the cords, try scattering different kinds of "good" chewy toys about. When our kitties were teething, we used bendy straws and scattered them everywhere. When kitty went to nip at us, we'd say "NO" firmly, blow a short, sharp puff of air directly in the face (the human equivalent of a hiss) - and then hand kitty a bendy straw. (We just scattered the entire box around the house so they were everywhere - made it very easy!)

Important in "re-training" cats is positive reinforcement. So whenever you see kitty playing with appropriate things, tell her WHAT a good kitty she is! Just like with young children, it takes some time. But if you're consistent about it whenever you see it happening over the next few weeks/month, it should work.

Laurie

foam pipe insulators! Cheap and effective. Not the most attractive thing to look at but they work until they get past that stage

Good luck, my kitten did it alot, then stopped and now at 14 months has ruined my Nintendo DS cord adaptor, $200 headphones, and Lan modem cable this month. I have 70 percent of cords covered with plastic day one but I just cant do everything in house especially devices like nintendo ds and headphones. Its the really small ones that have electrical current in them at the time I made sure cover. What is worse anything on ground that is small he digests and asks questions later.

We adopted Lolly with a bit of trepidation, because the note on her profile at the shelter specifically stated that she chews on cords. Sure enough, the first night she was here, she chewed up a Nintendo DS charger.

I know you said you tried the bitter stuff from the pet store, but there are a few different brands. A lot of people recommend Bitter Apple, but the one that worked for us was Fooey! I was stupid enough to taste it ( ) and it seriously is the worst tasting thing I've ever imagined.

Lolly has not chewed up any more cords since we liberally applied Fooey to all of them, but we know she tried -- upon kissing her on the nose the other day, my fiance could taste the nasty stuff. Hopefully she has learned her lesson.

http://www.amazon.com/Synergy-FG0005...8162543&sr=8-1

Reviews are quite poor