Remember back in July when we adopted two more cat’s, one is Clive who seems to live in a wonderful world of his own, and the other is Loppy (lugs) who had been so badly treated before being rescued, he had a badly damaged and misshapen ear.
He’d lived outside most of the time and was reported as having been seen kicked and swung around by the tail in all the snow last year before being taken to the rescue home.
It’s been a long slow haul to regain his trust, and he was very frightened of Ian, who seemed to come home on a noisy machine, with a funny hat on, and squeaky boots ( Alpine stars grrrr!)
He will lie on my knee in the house when I’m working at the PC all day though, and he’s now happy in the house instead of in the field behind the garden, where he spent his first couple of months with us.
The problem is the cat flap.
If we close it when he’s inside he’ll go out of it (so it doesn’t seem to hurt his damaged ear at all), but he will not pluck up courage to come back in through it. We’ve both kneeled inside trying to coax him with titbits but he just sits and cries and then plods off resigned to finding a bed in the field again, which I can’t allow to happen.
The outcome is the cat flap is strung up permanently open and it’s getting cold and draughty now.
I promised him in the car coming home that no-one would ever hurt him again, but I suspect there is a bad memory in his head somewhere which won’t go away.
Any ideas how to overcome this because I’m freezing while he lies tucked up in his cosy cat bed under the radiator…..
Meanwhile I’m contemplating the next gas bill.
Pat
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he probably doesn't know it opens from the outside. just grab him and poke him through it form the outside in.
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I would endorse Zero's recommendation. Cat's are pretty dumb when it comes to reasoning but it will get there eventually especially as the night gets colder. If you keep giving in it will never learn.
Mind you having said that our last cat never did master the technique of flicking open a partially open door in 15 years. Never allowed me to pick it up either and bit my ankles most days. Died last month. I sort of miss its unrelenting dislike of people, other animals and the world in general.
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...just grab him and poke him through it from the outside in.
16 years ago, when were living in a rented house where installing a flap wasn't an option, Mrs Beest used Z's method to train our then-new cat to come and go through the upper fanlight of the kitchen window. That one was the right side of Cliff's intelligence threshold and got the idea in less than half a hour; the one we have now might have taken a bit longer, but he now copes with a flap so I suspect he'd have got it eventually.
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>>of Cliff's intelligence threshold <<
We inherited the name of Clive for the other one so the above reassures me we're not the only ones to have a cat with a stupid name.
He's intelligent, he brought a mouse in earlier and dropped it in his water bowl to drown it!
Mice can swim and the chase around the entire ground floor of the house warmed me up.
Pat
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>> brought a mouse in earlier and dropped it
Ours did that last night. SWMBO curled up, hid her face and squealed like a stuck pig. I dropped a glass over it only for her to complain its tail was sticking out and I may be hurting it.
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>> he probably doesn't know it opens from the outside. just grab him and poke him
>> through it form the outside in.
>>
I've been doing that with my cat for years and he just turns around and stares at the door with the same expression that you or I might use if we'd been shoved through a solid wall and emerged mysteriously on the other side.
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Never had any problems with cats and cat flaps.
What happens if you leave his food just inside the cat flap (making sure it's a couple of hours past his usual feeding time)?
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Both are good suggestions push him through it with food on the other side. I am not sure you will be able to poke him into it though. It sounds like he is too timid for that.
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This kind of thing? Self built in this case but I guess such things might be available if you could fins the right key phrase for Google. Which I couldn't in 30 seconds.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d8bFPq1Hng
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The other three would soon eat that, and they all sort of graze all day anyway.
I know what you mean CG, secretly you wanted him to accept you!
A promise IS a promise MM, he chose me when I went in the pen and came and sat on my knee in front of 12 other cats...he knew I would never let him sleep outside again.
He loves sleeping in the greenhouse in a box on the staging but I need that closed too for the winter.
Pat
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>> I know what you mean CG, secretly you wanted him to accept you!
Him? It was a female. It accepted me all right. It never refused food and a warm bed and thrived on the free medical treatment I provided. Just never gave anything in return other than unwavering hostility.
We are now a cat free zone .
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>>I promised him in the car coming home that no-one would ever hurt him again
A promise is a promise, Pat. You'll have to keep that flap propped open for years yet - otherwise you'll be branded like Tuition Fees Clegg.../
;)
Else let him sleep out of doors. Mine loves it.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Tue 12 Nov 13 at 17:09
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Thought of a magnetic collar thingy...?? (for the cat not the other 'alf. My Alpinestars don't squeak )
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I'm sure the cat doesn't really mind the cold. Our semi stray cat that adopted us is quite content to spend all night asleep in the outside porch or across the road in the neighbours hedge.
Granted she does come in for a snoop around, but try and shut the door or even get inbetween her and the exit and she's faster than you can say Jack Frost and runs back outside again. Stupid cat.
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Cat intelligence is just borderline for coping with the varied complications of domestic living, so small differences in intelligence between cats makes some seem very clever and others absolutely thick.
I have had cats that can easily work out cat flaps. In London we had problems with other cats coming in and stealing the food, so I turned the catch on the flap so that it would only work one way but could be lifted instead of pushed by an intelligent cat. No other cat could work out how to do that, especially as periodically I switched the catch the other way.
Yet with others we have been through the pantomime of crouching by the flap, calling and rattling the food bowl, trying to entice it through.
But they are past masters of feigning stupidity and helplessness in order to train you to wait on them. Cats don't have owners, they have staff.
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Our cat is perfectly capable of using its flap, whose magnetic lock doesn't keep out the thuggish leader cat from the other house. But it often can't be bothered and asks to be let in or out by sitting looking a bit annoyed near a door. Sometimes it waits near the cat flap for someone to open the door.
Silly rotund furry brute.
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>>Cat intelligence is just borderline for coping with the varied complications of domestic living,
>> so small differences in intelligence between cats makes some seem very clever and others absolutely thick
>>
When I was still at junior school, the cat we had appeared to be a bit brighter than some.
I learned to get into the kitchen via the top of the sash window which was usually left open by a couple of inches.
It would jump onto the window sill and then jump up at the window so it got its paws onto the top sash.
Its weight would lower the window, then it jumped off and with its next leap, onto the top of the window and in.
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Have You Been Framed showed a video clip of a cat scaling the rough bricks of a house to reach a first floor bedroom window some years ago - astonishing feat by one of what are remarkable animals.
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Just an example:
We have 4 cats, but only one has worked out how to get milk out of a milkjug by dipping his paw in and licking it. He knows how to hold a cream pot still with one paw while using the other to scrape it out.
But none of the others can work it out, even when shown how.
He also worked out how to open a metal cake tin which we thought was secure on the table.
He pushed it off the edge of the table so that it burst open on the floor, and then ate the entire cake.
But even seemingly stupid cats have field-cunning. I've watched them track a scent left by a running mouse 20 minutes earlier, and I've watched one lie in wait for a mouse round a corner, having worked out which direction it was heading in.
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Been away, so don;t know if you solved this.
If not, then make sure the cat flap is jammed open, and then hang a tea towel over the gap ensuring the cat has to push through/past something to get in or out.
I'm sure you can work out the gradual change from there.
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Thanks, not solved yet Mark but will try it.
I got up an hour ago to find the downstairs freezing with a Fenland icy gale blowing into the hall.....the cat was tucked up snugly in a cosy cat bed under a cold radiator looking at me pleadingly to put some heat on!
Pat
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>Thanks, not solved yet Mark but will try it.
Can't you enlist Ian's help Pat?
tinyurl.com/oplfs9a
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Now there's a good idea:)
Pat
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Help, I'm cold! - Zero
