Saturday, June 25th, 2011 at
6:18 am
I have a roughly two-year-old fixed male cat. He was a stray kitten but was taken to a shelter very young; around six months he went to a foster home, and I adopted him about a year ago. He’s always been energetic, and occasionally he gets a bit nippy or busts out the claws, but on the whole he’s well-behaved, and I have a small spray bottle I use to give him a little spritz when he gets out of hand (usually just holding it up is enough to get him to stop whatever mischief he’s up to). The past week, though, he’s seemed cranky. When I come home, everything’s more or less where I left it, but when I’m at home, he’s always getting into things—pawing books off the shelves, picking up little things like coins or paper clips and stashing them places, digging through my bags, scattering papers … on and on. I can sometimes get his attention with a feather boa toy, and occasionally he’ll snuggle up to me for some petting, but so much more of his time is spent wreaking havoc. Since he only behaves like this when I’m home (he makes enough of a mess that it’s pretty obvious) I’m guessing he’s trying to get my attention for SOME reason, but I can’t figure out what. There haven’t been any real upheavals (not that I can think of); he has food and water and a clean litter box; he doesn’t show any symptoms of health problems. I’ve made him little hideouts and tunnels, given him boxes to explore, tried to play with him or pet him/scratch his ears/etc., but none of it seems to be what he wants.
Any theories? Things I should try? Any suggestions would be much appreciated—I’m really not sure what to do for him at this point.
He does like chasing toy mice (and other similar-sized objects—we play a lot of fetch). I tried a laser pointer but he ignores the dot and just bites the pointer. The paper bag is a cool idea—I’ll give that a try.
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