Soon the old year will end once again and a new year will be called in with a lot of noise and light. There are really not many options to protect your cats or pets against the fireworks and loud bangs.
Keeping Them Indoors
The best advice I can give you, is to keep your cats, dogs, literary all your pets indoors. If you got outgoing cats, now is the time to leave them indoors. If your cat is never indoor, it is important to install a litter box for them. Also, make sure they have adequate amounts of water and food.
The amount of fireworks used before and after new year’s eve is different from country to country and place where you live. In our country and the place where we live, we do not usually see many fireworks until the actual shifting of the year. In bigger cities or in countries where fireworks aren’t so heavily regulated, it might be starting the weeks before Christmas and continue throughout the first week of January. Similar stories happen on other National days when fireworks are allowed.
Apart from that your cat could get hurt from fireworks exploding nearby or annoying kids throwing fireworks at cats, they might also get frightened by every loud bang and run wildly in the wrong direction. Running wildly in any direction could mean that your cat crosses the road (and potentially could get hurt by traffic) or your cat could get lost.
Keeping Your Cat In A Small Place
If you do happen to have a room that has no noise coming in from the outside somewhere in your house, then by all means have your cat (or dog) there, but in my experience such a room does not exist, unless you got a music studio in your basement.
They will be able to hear the loud noises and see the bright flashes from fireworks anywhere in your house. If cats panic from the noise they are better off to run freely through the entire house then to contain them in one small space.
Calming Spray
The one and only calming spray we use in our house is the diffuser of Feliway. Feliway uses pheromones that are spread throughout the room. The pheromones are of the calming type and calm the cats in the room down. It is known to reduce environmental stress.
The fireworks will however still be loud enough to cause panic in your cats.
Stay With Your Pets
If its possible to enjoy the fireworks from your window, you could also stay indoors with your cats. That way they have someone around they trust and can go to you for safety.
Reduce Sound
Closing outside doors and windows will help a lot to reduce sound. Closing all the doors inside the house, will further reduce the sound.
Teach The Sound Of Fireworks
You can teach your cat to get used to the sounds of fireworks to get less scared. This comes down to putting some YouTube video’s of fireworks on your loudspeakers and playing it in the room where your cats are. You can start with a low volume and crank it up over time or over the time of days ahead of the fireworks festival day.
Don’t Stimulate Their Fears
When a cat goes under your sofa or bed to hide from noise, leave them be there. Don’t spend too much attention to them, they will come out again when the fireworks are a thing of the past.
Just like with kids, cats can see that you are not afraid of the firework noise outside (while being inside of course) and will learn that it is safe to be there.
Own Fireworks?
If you do have own fireworks to fire off, I would suggest finding a place further away from the house. Perhaps there is an open place where you can fire it off instead, or go somewhere else in your neighbourhood.
In our neighbourhood there are maybe 2 others who fire something off, but if you live in the city this number is probably way higher. It is not always easy to prevent your cats from hearing the fireworks. I would neither advice anyone to leave the fireworks out of their tradition.
Just make it as comfortable for your cat(s) as possible indoors and go and celebrate the fireworks outside away from the house. Have a great celebration!
Such good information. This is my second year that 4 of my cats dissapeared. This year due to cameras I know for sure it is the fire works. They ran wild all jumping each other. Straight across the street. Today was first time that haven’t seen my cats in a full 24 hours. Hope they come back soon. Also this all happened because a neighbor had visitors and randomly lit the sky with fire works 5 days before New year’s.
Oh my Sammy, that’s horrible. You definitely would want to keep your cats indoors during or before the actual night. In a lot of places kids already light fireworks several days before the actual day that it is allowed to fire off fireworks. I hope your cats all came back or will come back.
Thanks for your comment!
Steven, Cathabits