What's a safe height to drop a cat?
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at
11:48 am
My dog has a problem with my cat and chases it. I built a high perch for my cat in the living room. He has no problems climbing on top, but he can’t get down. Twice I came back from work to find my cat meowing helplessly atop the perch (basically a pillar with a platform at the top). I need to teach the cat to jump from heights, and I plan to drop him from somewhere. What’s a safe height?
Filed under: Cat Furniture
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Cats frequently get hurt falling from short heights, like a perch, because they don’t have enough time in midair to flip and turn into the proper position to land safely. Build your kitty a second platform to get down, but remember cats never get down too gracefully (they climb up very well, but sort of scoot and slide down).
You absolutely don’t need to teach your cat how to fall. He instinctively knows how, and you’ll just end up making him frightened and wary of you. If he’s not jumping down, it’s because he knows he’ll get hurt.
I bought my cats a wooden ladder, and covered the steps with carpet and put a kitty platform bed on top. They have no problem going up and down (but a dog would).
You should put the dog in a kennel while you are away. The cat shouldn’t have to suffer because of the dog.
why don’t you just drop it from the top of the cat platform it would be the height you would need.
I don’t think it’d be very nice to drop that poor cat from any height.
I bet the cat is afraid to come down because the dog is down there, but a children’s gate up between tow rooms and keep them apart until you return,GOOD luck, don`t drop the cat off of something very high, teach the dog to leave Kitty alone.
You should make another perch that is half of the high perch in front of it so it can act like a stair or a lower platform for the cat to jump down.
If he’s scared to jump down, it’s because he’s scared or it hurts and he’s tried it before. I wouldn’t drop the cat, tried it. It just makes them mad. They don’t really "learn" like dogs’ do. It may be a lot of work maybe not, but what I did was (since I pet-sit dogs my cat gets scared all the time) I took two small wooden boards about 8 inches on each side, and didn’t nail them to the wall, but I got some of that oxy-clean glue that works hard, but peels off like tape. It works great. I just take them down when my petsitting job is over