RE: What do you do when your cat won't listen to you?
It really takes a lot of patience and time to tech your rules to a cat. I'm not a strict pet guardian, I realize that living with a pet is different then living alone. The first thing I did was to move all my precious and breakable stuff out of their reach. It's better to be safe than sorry, and I can't really blame the cat for destroying something I love, it's not precious to her. Both of my cats caught up to the rules pretty quickly. My older cat really hates when I pick her up, so when she climbs somewhere she shouldn't I just pick her up and put her down. After a few times, she stops climbing up, and after a few sessions like that she doesn't climb there anymore. My younger cat doesn't climb that much, but I had a problem with him biting through my cables. I solved it by buying a bitter spray at the pet shop. When they bite or scratch me I make a sharp "ssss" sound I usually make when I'm hurt, they get gentler after that. I think that cats react similarly if they get bitten too hard during play time. Those are just small scratches I get, of course, I was never attacked or bitten seriously by my cats. I also sometimes clap loudly when they do something I don't approve of. When they do something I like, I give them a treat.