Our family Siamese cat loves to get into high places where no man has gone before. He is always looking up and climbing and leaping, on top of the china closet and curtain rods, door frame sills and the refrigerator.
He walks across that narrow edge on door frames and then leaps off with ease. He loves knocking picture frames off the the highest shelves, and climbing the windows to knock down hanging plants.
The house has become his kingdom beause everything we care about has been packed away so Boots does not break it.
Anyone else have a Siamese Cat, or a cat that loves to climb? How do you curb that kind of behavior? Other then locking him in a cage.
My cats like being up high, but they are not very good at climbing! Well, one of them is. Whenever he is allowed outside, he runs and jumps full speed up into the tree in my yard. He is crazy fast at climbing up, but has brain hasn't quite worked out how to climb down yet!
We have to get him down with a ladder! So he isn't allowed out any more!
Indoors though, they love to sit at the highest point in the room, which is the fridge and watch down on me as I cook, or as I watch TV, they will sit happily up there for a long long time.
We had to rescue our young kitten from our tree just last week, it is a very tall curly willow tree with long slender branches and she managed to get herself way up the top well out of reach of any ladder. She nearly fell at one stage and my children were trying to place cushions strategically that she could land on lol. it was pretty serious though and we didn't know what to do. Then we all went and stood near the trunk and coaxed her toward the middle of the tree so she wouldn't be at risk of falling all the way to the ground. She still would not come down far enough though. Eventually we resorted to using the garden hose to scare her into climbing further down so we could get her down properly. She hasn't gone back up that tree since
(02-13-2013, 06:51 AM)4sweed Wrote: Anyone else have a Siamese Cat, or a cat that loves to climb? How do you curb that kind of behavior? Other then locking him in a cage.
Climb, leap, run, you name it. My mom warned me the cats had gotten to the curtain on one of the kitchen windows. When I arrived at her house for nanny duty, they had actually BENT the curtain rod! They are like bad little children!
I don't have a Siamese, my cat is a gray tabby. She doesn't do the gymnastics that I've seen other cats do on Youtube, but she knows how to get on top of the refrigerator or the bookshelves and she'll hang out there for a while cleaning herself or watching me and the rat terrier.
She has tried to climb on smaller items like my daughter's old dollhouse and scared herself when she toppled them.
Boots, got crazy yesterday after I bought him a new toy. It was a white featherly bird or mouse, never figured out for sure what it was, but he had fun.
He was laying on the bed when I threw it to him. He looked at and acted bored. Finally, he got up to sniff it and started pawing at it. All of a sudden he started batting it all over the bed, up in the air and hitting the headboard, first the toy, then the cat as he leaped after it.
The toy slid off the bed, and he followed batting it under the bed and all around the room. When it was time for bed we had to hide it from him because he would not quit playing.
Both mom and I, had tears running down our faces from laughing so hard. It was the best gift I could give that cat and also lift mother's spirits for a little bit.
All the cats I have cared for love climbing. It's a good thing the compound where we live has a garden with trees that have low hanging branches. These give the cats the opportunity to climb trees but they won't get stuck there. I think it really is part of their nature to climb and jump on and off obstacles. It sure looks like they enjoy it and it seems effortless when they do it.
For some reason, our cat never was much into jumping on things and climbing... not even when she was a kitten. I'm not sure why that is, but once in a while she gets adventurous and leaps onto something that's much higher than I think she can jump. :-)
Her current "I refuse to jump higher than this" height is the highest bed in the house. She even uses a "step" to get onto her window perch. Well okay, that *is* terribly high, but for other things, she's just not interested although she does seem to like to have the advantage of being high to survey her kingdom!
06-07-2013, 07:28 AM, (This post was last modified: 06-07-2013, 07:29 AM by maelstrom.)
My cat doesn't seem to enjoy climbing very much, and if she does I don't see her do it. That being said, she used to enjoy being in the tallest parts of the room, and you would constantly find her on top of bookshelfs, TV stands, and every other tall piece of furniture that you can think of. I think that because she's gotten much older, we don't see her on top of things anymore. Or perhaps there just isn't many more things for her to be on top of, now. It's been a few months since I've seen her on top of a bookshelf, and we've since removed the thing allowing her to get up there.
Actually, neither of our cats does climb! They'll hop up onto furniture but not try to get onto cabinets (I might be in trouble for having said that!) I think one of them WOULD hop up high if she could have access, but we try not to give her a stairway for that action.
Oddly enough, the dog I used to have (lab/coon hound mix) climbed more than either of the cats does. She'd easily climb up onto the back of the sofa. We used to say she was part mountain goat!
Both of my cats love to climb too! Fortunately, my home is cat-proofed so they can climb wherever they want. When I first got my cat, I wasn't as prepared, so we had a little problems. She loves to climb my shelves, but the highest she could get was when jumping from somewhere. Then she tried to climb higher from the lower shelf, and ended up falling down with a pawfull of whatever was on the higher shelf. The only way I got her to stop was to rearrange my shelves. I filled the lowest and the highest shelves with smaller stuff, and I keep the books on the ones that are just outside her reach, so she has nothing to hold on to when she wants to climb higher. She was also trying to jump on top of a door for a while, that was really troublesome. I guess she fell and hurt herself a little bit when I wasn't watching, since she suddenly stopped one day.
I once heard that cats express their dominance by getting higher. The highest cat in the room is the alpha one. But I haven't really noticed it with my cats, so I can't confirm it.
Fortunately, my home is cat-proofed so they can climb wherever they want. When I first got my cat, I wasn't as prepared, so we had a little problems. She loves to climb my shelves, but the highest she could get was when jumping from somewhere. Then she tried to climb higher from the lower shelf, and ended up falling down with a pawfull of whatever was on the higher shelf. The only way I got her to stop was to rearrange my shelves. I filled the lowest and the highest shelves with smaller stuff, and I keep the books on the ones that are just outside her reach, so she has nothing to hold on to when she wants to climb higher. She was also trying to jump on top of a door for a while, that was really troublesome. I guess she fell and hurt herself a little bit when I wasn't watching, since she suddenly stopped one day. 