What do I get a kitten that chews on everything?
My 6 month old kitten has chewed through my laptop charger and my iPhone charger chord already and just today I found her chewing through the strap of my brand new bra from Victoria’s Secret. I can’t afford to keep replacing these expensive items she seems to think are toys. Do cats teeth? What kind of toy or whatever can I buy her so that she won’t chew on my stuff anymore?
I knew when we got our kittens that there would be some adjustments to make, and that we needed to provide them with scratching areas, toys, etc. And believe me – our cats live in Kitty Heaven! We have not just one but TWO huge cat trees, with plenty of climbing, scratching fun. They use them both quite a lot. We also have several doorknob hanging scratchers.
Anytime we’ve seen them scratching something they aren’t supposed to be – we correct them. We remove them from the situation, and then present a distraction, such as toy. So far it has worked great and our cats do not scratch inappropriate areas.
However, nobody told me CHEWING would be an issue.
Ritter, our youngest cat (he’s almost 1.5 years old), has started chewing on the corners of anything wood. It started a few months ago on the knobs of the dining room chairs. We tried using several types of anti-chew sprays such as Chew Stop, Bitter Apple, and even hot sauce. Didn’t seem to phase Mr. Woodchuck Ritter! He just kept chomping. So, we covered up the chair backs with jackets. It may look funny, but it was the only thing that stopped him! Then, we noticed him chewing other corners. End table corners, the corner of the dresser, the corner of the banister. Pretty much everything has at least one or two chew marks on it now.
April 10th, 2013 at 11:14 pm
I knew when we got our kittens that there would be some adjustments to make, and that we needed to provide them with scratching areas, toys, etc. And believe me – our cats live in Kitty Heaven! We have not just one but TWO huge cat trees, with plenty of climbing, scratching fun. They use them both quite a lot. We also have several doorknob hanging scratchers.
Anytime we’ve seen them scratching something they aren’t supposed to be – we correct them. We remove them from the situation, and then present a distraction, such as toy. So far it has worked great and our cats do not scratch inappropriate areas.
However, nobody told me CHEWING would be an issue.
Ritter, our youngest cat (he’s almost 1.5 years old), has started chewing on the corners of anything wood. It started a few months ago on the knobs of the dining room chairs. We tried using several types of anti-chew sprays such as Chew Stop, Bitter Apple, and even hot sauce. Didn’t seem to phase Mr. Woodchuck Ritter! He just kept chomping. So, we covered up the chair backs with jackets. It may look funny, but it was the only thing that stopped him! Then, we noticed him chewing other corners. End table corners, the corner of the dresser, the corner of the banister. Pretty much everything has at least one or two chew marks on it now.
References :
April 10th, 2013 at 11:42 pm
You’ll need two things for this – good things to chew on, and foul tasting things easily applied to what she shouldn’t be chewing. Tell the salesperson at Petsmart etc that you have a Chihuahua and they will show you many many things appropriately sized for a kitten. Foul things you get in the produce section of a grocery store. Lemon juice concentrate rarely fails and if it does a bottle of nail polish remover will dry to leave pure nasty.
References :