TL;DR: Cat meows a lot, particularly at night, or when someone moves or is standing. Clicker training hard because cat seems to have infinite meowing breath rivaling that of a legendary opera singer. Playing with cat has minimal success.
My wife and I adopted a cat two months ago. He is now 12 months old. The vet says he's as healthy as a cat can be. His fur is silky smooth, he's energetic, and fairly friendly. But he will meow and meow and meow for ANY reason. (His name is Scamp, but I usually just call him Lil' Shit.)
He meows if he detects any movement from us at night, especially when we get up to use the bathroom. We have to keep our bedroom door closed because he meows randomly at night, (usually from under the bed,) waking us up. Right now we have a dehumidifier going on at night to cover up the sound of his meows, but neither of us really likes having a loud machine humming every single night, and once summer is over we wont be able to keep running it without drying ourselves out. This is probably the biggest problem, and I'm not sure how to fix this one.
The second one of us comes downstairs (or gets up from the couch or computer when we're downstairs already) he starts meowing and rushes to near the kitchen, meowing and expecting someone to feed him, regardless of how recently he was fed. (He gets dry food at 10 AM and 10PM, and wet food at 4pm) I plan to get an auto feeder to fix this issue, but those cost close to a hundred bucks, and I've heard a ton of horror stories about cats breaking into them. I'm wary about dropping that much money on something that may not work. Plus, since I'll still be giving him wet food, he's probably going to meow at me for food regardless. I'm sure if I could fix the night meowing, this would be much less of an issue.
I am trying clicker training, but I have very few opportunities to give him a treat because the slightest movement inspires him to meow. There is barely a half-second pause between the meows. The only time he will stop if is both my wife and I are sitting at the couch or at our computers, in his eyesight. And this is only temporary, after a couple hours he will start up again. I have tried the clicker training during this time with minimal success, but this means I have to keep cat treats near me, and if I don't have a hand on them constantly, the little punk will sneak up and steal the entire bag, which is both hilarious and infuriating. Watching my wife chase him around as he desperately tried to haul a plastic bag away was one of the funnier things I've seen in a long time. Do I have to keep them in a pouch or something? If I have them in my pocket, they get dirty from the pocket lint and my body heat. On top of this, once he gets a treat, that just inspires him to meow for another ten minutes. I'm probably going to have to see if I can find an in-depth guide for clicker training a cat.
He has an absurd amount of toys, but we thought that maybe he was bored and wants someone to play with him. This works sometimes, but he will only play if you sit on the floor in the middle of the room. If someone is standing he typically hides under something and meows at them until they sit down or feed him. And half the time he won't play anyway, unless you count sitting two inches out of reach and meowing at you playing. Plus, once the play session is done (usually when he stops playing,) he starts meowing again because whoever was playing with him had the gall to stand up. Maybe getting him a cat tree so he can be a bit higher off the ground will help.
Thanks for reading all this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I have used the word "meow" so much that it has lost all meaning now.
[link] [comments]
from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/c418jz/adopted_cat_has_been_around_for_two_months/
No comments:
Post a Comment