My husband got this video of my cat Ninja, it’s so hilarious. She makes our lives full of laughs!

3-0.

Well, one positive thing about me is I never seem to give up! But that hasn’t really helped me in my efforts to “sneak up on” my cat thus far… here is my second try back firing again. I can never seem to scare Ninja back as many times as she comes around to scare me!

This is just a simple video I took of my cat, Ninja, playing in the empty bath tub. She does this often where she throws herself into the bathroom and dashes around, in and out, of the empty tub.

I was spying on her and she finally had enough!

These two are the very best of friends, and I had a few giggles while watching this. Enjoy and thanks to Kathee for sharing this with me!

I’ve never really had a lot of the common behavioral problems most cat owners have, and I think it’s because I understand animal training in a few different forms and now how and what to reinforce and more importantly, what NOT to.

But recently my cousin Ashley asked me to do a post on why the heck her cat keeps chasing her feet around. At first, I thought she was just joking around and maybe the cat was dodging her feet every once in a while…

But then she told me her cat actually attacks her feet and even to the point where she can easily make her bleed. Wow, this really surprised me so I dug a little deeper on the issue.

I found an article somewhat on the topic called Why Cats May Bite and Scratch.

So to keep this short and simple, I will list the possible things YOU are dong as an owner to make your cat go after your feet, and what you can do to stop it (unless you like it!)

Possible causes making your cat go after your feet:

• You taught it at a young age that feet are play-things by playing with your cat using your feet.
• You drug socks hanging half way off your feet around for your cat to play and chase around.
• Your cat doesn’t have enough other toys to play with.
• Your cat is being playful and/or bored from lack of stimulation else where and needs more time with you.
• Your cat tried it one time and you made it super duper fun so it learned that it does it now to get your attention and/or a reaction from you.

Somewhere along the lines, all pet owners accidentally reward behavior they don’t actually want. I once had a bird who made baby bird sounds for attention and I reinforced it from day one by just LOOKING at the bird when it did it because I thought something might be wrong. We all do it, sometimes we can’t help it, but the sooner we catch onto that, the sooner we can work on fixing it.

What you can do:

• Invest in some more toys that fit the same criteria your playful feet do.
• Don’t react when your cat goes after your feet, make them as “non fun” as possible so your cat is no longer interested in them. This includes NOT yelling, screaming, making eye contact, or anything that could be exciting and reinforcing to your cat.
• Cue an incompatible behavior… meaning, a behavior your cat knows on command that makes it so that it can’t attack your feet and do the behavior you are asking at the same time so it has to leave your feet alone.
• Wear shoes that might discourage your cat from playing with your feet. Nothing that will hurt the cat, but something harder that isn’t as easy and soft to bite into.
• Don’t use your feet to encourage your cat to play.

My friend Cate posted this for all her friends to see and I just HAD to share it here. It’s too funny not to pass around! I can see why the girl needed video proof of this!

It has happened more times than I can count… and all I can say is Thank God for that restart button. Because otherwise Geek Squad would be my BFF.

My cat has walked across my keyboard, and when my husband leaves the lamp by his lap top on and walks away for the day, you can pretty much put money on the fact that she WILL be on top of that lap top. If it was open, she is inside it and if it was closed, she’s on top of it (not so much harm there).

So we’ve learned to turn the heat lamps OFF when leaving the office since it’s the warmth that seems to be attracting our cat there.

Laptops and all computers also get nice and hot which cats just seem to love. My husband elevated his from behind so it won’t get as hot on his desk. It seemed to do the trick by itself. And we now leave our laptops almost entirely closed if not completely closed when we aren’t using them or walk away for any amount of time if the other person isn’t there to keep a close eye.

My husband USE to leave his computer just barely open so that a download could be going but he wouldn’t have to worry about our cat laying on the keyboard. But then she started laying ON TOP and closing out his download…

Ut-oh…

So our way of cat proofing our office? We have heat lamps in between our desks we turn on to deter our cat away from the laptops. It’s the spot that’s hotter than the computers themselves and she can really sprawl out.

So to cat proof? Just find something they will enjoy even MORE!

Let me just openly admit, I’ve never been attracted to naked cats (aka “Sphynx” cats) just because I have never been accustomed to seeing them. I’ve only ever seen them in the news, and not even ever in person yet!

However, as I was looking into them for a different type of topic to write about on here, I found that I actually do like the way some of them look!

For example, the top Sphynx website I came across was this one and the photo under “temperment” I actually went,

“Hey, this cat is pretty cool looking!”

And of course my first thoughts with these cats is… no fur = no allergies, right? But the extra bathing and ear cleaning comes along with them (though you should be doing those things with your fur-covered cats anyway) not to mention, lots of them actually DO have fur, but it’s hard to see because it’s so fine.

I think it might be the eyes that really caught me. I’m a sucker for cat eyes, and those baby blues on the darker body was beautiful to me.

Anyway, I thought I’d pass the link along to those of you interested in learning more about these naked felines!

I don’t know about your cat, but all my cats have always LOVED packing supplies! Boxes (of course, as mentioned so much…) but also all the good stuff INSIDE… like peanuts, bags full of air and just paper scraps and other fun things to play with.

Once my goodies are out of the box, Ninja will jump right in for her fun!

This is a great way to let your cat make a bit of a mess and have a little fun that doesn’t happen every day. It’s a great stimulating act that you can offer with little clean up for you (unless your cat is really hyped up or you decide to add some cat nip to make it that way!)

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