You go to bed and have a perfectly cleaned up living room ready for your visitors Friday evening. Next morning everything that was in shelves and on tables is spread all over the floor. Why do your cats throw stuff off the table? Is it just because it is fun? Let’s find out below.
Creating A Cat Safe Environment
It keeps amazing me. I clean up everything before I go to bed. I clean up not only because it is nice to live in a tidy house, but also because I have 5 cats living in this same house that love to make a mess. So I have to make the house cat-proof, securing anything that I don’t want to find underneath a cupboard or table the next morning.
The kitchen table is cleared out and the dishes are done. The kitchen paper is on its location and on the living room table only some candles remain. In the window sills we got only plastic plants and a statue. That isn’t that way only because some plants can be harmful to cats, but also because it otherwise becomes a giant mess – you learn these things through experience.
Still A Giant Mess
Next morning you enter the room to find pieces of kitchen paper spread over the kitchen floor. They managed to find some macaroni underneath a cupboard and played wildly through the entire house.
A box with blueberries that was securely placed on the counter, far away from the edge, was now lying on the floor and half the blueberries had rolled out. I find blueberries – some flat splodges and some intact, all over the kitchen and living room.
Cat beds that were on the sofa are now upside down on the ground. Not a cat toy can be found anywhere, but a look underneath the sofa reveals the bunch – together with a couple more blueberries.
Water splodges all around the water fountain, reveal that someone had an argument with the noisy motor. Curtains are ravaged or at least not on the place I left them in last night. One of the curtains has a giant bump. Removing the curtain, reveals the plastic plant upside down on the sofa edge, nestled in the curtain.
Cats Are Thugs
Any cat owner probably recognizes these signs. Cats can be very sweet, cuddly and funny, but they are also naughty thugs. Some cats are outright sadistic creatures that want to break every collectors item you got on display.
When you think you can still have nice stuff displayed without your cats destroying them for you, you are wrong. Everything we want to have on display is behind glass as if it was a museum. Everything important and breakable is inside cupboards and closed shelves.
It isn’t so much about your cats wanting to obsessively destroy things on purpose, but it is more of a hunting practice game they would do in the wild with their prey.
Anyone that has a cat that goes outside knows the behaviour all too well. Your cat comes home with a decent sized mouse, bird or perhaps a butterfly. It is shown to us as a form of “Look at me” and the next moment they play with it as if their life depends on it. Is it still moving? Yes? Time to shovel it around the floor another time.
They Are Trying To Get Your Attention
As soon as they learn that you will respond when they (threaten to) push an object off the table, they will proceed with this behaviour in the future to get what they want. Isn’t it just great to be in control over your food supply, opening and closing of doors and getting the right type of attention?
Now they are in complete control over things in the house, because you responded the way they expected you to. Don’t think you can sit down to do some work on your PC or laptop, for now they will do whatever they can to get your attention and get their desires answered.
Not Only To Objects
Cats don’t only push objects around or off a table or counter. They also do this to each-other. Just when one of our cats is walking past another, it looks like nothing is happening, but suddenly this paw appears and wacks the passing-by cat over its head. There are pictures and many video’s on the internet showing cats getting thrown off stairs, balconies and tables by this behaviour.
What To Do About Mess Creators?
According to Jackson Galaxy from Animal Planet’s cats show Cats From Hell, the reason is that you need (more) cat toys for your cat.
Giving them plenty of cat toys to play around, they will devote their time to those and leave your delicate and less delicate items alone.
But They Got Toys!
Although your cats can never have too many cat toys, our cats really (no REALLY) have plenty of cat toys. Surely they don’t need more cat toys?
Jackson says to this that if your cats have plenty of cat toys already, then they are in dire need of new cat toys!
The old cat toys become less interesting because they have been played with before – either by the cat or by the other cat. Cats leave a special smell, a pheromone, behind on everything they touch or play with.
Who would play with or eat a long dead mouse that has been there for months? A fresh one is way better and more fun, especially when they still show resistance.
Must Read: Top 5 Best Cat Toys
Woke Up Late?
There is also a chance that you just wake up late. I once woke up in the early hours of Saturday morning to see a perfectly tidy room, only to come back later that morning to come to a giant mess.
When you wake up late, perhaps scheduled feeding time is long overdue. Whether you call that controlling your response time or them getting totally bored when everything has been played with and food isn’t in the bowl yet, I leave up to you to decide.
Cats generally do have a tight schedule and routine for their daily habits, napping, grooming, playing and feeding time belong to that schedule. They are creatures of habit and they hate it when their routines get messed up. Change in environment often leads also to destructive and unwanted behaviour.
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