Bad cat!

[onefixedstar]

My (roommate's) cat is turning into a most manipulative creature. Most recently, she has decided to start making us get up at specific times. Her tactics are thus: When she decides one of us should get up, she begins doing something that she knows annoys us, pausing periodically to look over and make sure we're paying attention. If we ignore her long enough, she moves onto something even more destructive. If we get up to stop her, she's right back at it before we make it back to bed. If we lock her out of our bedrooms, she stands at the door and cries. (She's done this for as long as two hours straight before. Given her record of persistence, I'm quite certain she's capable of keeping it up all night.)

The obvious thing to do, of course, is to ignore her. That's easy to do when she's knocking over empty garbage cans, but less easy when she's chewing on my leather boots, or crying loud enough to disturb the neighbours.

The kicker is that as soon as one of us gets up, she goes and lies down in the now-empty bed.

Comments

[onefixedstar.livejournal.com]

Now THAT is a wonderful idea. Watergun shopping trip coming up!

[lilactime.livejournal.com]

We trained both of our cats out of a lot of bad bahaviours using water guns.
And spoons when they decided the kitchen counter was cat territory.

[semiotic-trader.livejournal.com]

Good luck with that. Our cat has decided that the spray bottle is a game, too. We spray her, she runs away, we put the bottle down, she comes back and resumes whatever annoying behaviour she was engaged in. Or, lately, she runs away as soon as she see me reach for the bottle.

(My understanding is that you have to not let the cat see where the water is coming from, so they associate it with their activity, rather than with you.)

Can you tell I haven't had a solid night's sleep at home in 8 years?