apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Hands down, the biggest issue is the fur. So much fur.

Thw fur and the smell!!!

The furniture/rug wreckage. I mean, I love quality furniture, the color white, velvet, nice draperies, etc. but none of them look like a great idea right now. It certainly impacts style in the home.

i agree it's the fur. having a cat that's a mix of white and black makes it difficult on my white couch and my mostly dark to black clothing. i'd also say the claws are an issue...our cat's great about not scratching furniture intentionally...it's when she gets excited and stretches her claws out that she snags everything. but how can you be upset with her for being happy?

I love my creatures, and they are worth putting up with in every respect - from cleaning up after them to finding sitters when I need to leave them, but I do feel sad when contemplating making "grown-up" furniture purchases knowing that even if I pick the perfect, pet friendly fabric, one of them is going to barf, or scratch, or otherwise make a new sofa look like the current one. sigh.

Hairballs and vomiting up food that was too quickly scarfed down. What is the hurry?!? There has never been a food shortage around here. I really don't understand it.

I thought pretty hard about this question, because our new dog has been peeing and pooping on the floor frustratingly often these days, but really, the smell and the dustballs are all fixable, and it's all just stuff. if you love your animals and you love your home, you keep it all clean and happy.
it's the travelling part that's hard for me, because i know that my dog would miss me and i would always wonder if the person dogsitting is doing a good job, unless it was my mother-in-law, then I would be certain that the dog would be well taken care of. but it's a big favour to ask, 'will you watch my dog for X months while I trot across the globe?'

Allergy is the huge reason for me not to have a cat. If I were to suddenly now stop having allergies to it, the no-pets thing my building has would probably do it.

The biggest issue for me is finding an apartment building that allows pets. I'm frustrated that often one irresponsible tenants can sour a landlord against pets-on-premise. I enjoy the benefits of renting, but will likely have to buy a house so that I can share my home with pets.

The fur and the claws, and the litterbox, I can keep on top of. However, I cannot bring myself to travel for more days than I can reasonably leave my cat alone. Her unwillingness to even enter a cat-carrier makes the thought of boarding her impossible.

Concealing the litterbox is my big dilemma. Traveling is also hard, because I feel guilty even when we get a catsitter, because there's only one she's ever taken to and cuddled with(and that catsitter graduated college and moved out of NYC)

BBT, it doesn't matter what color the cat is -- they all shed for maximum contrast with the furniture. I have a black cat who sheds white on black clothing and rugs. Don't ask me how she does it.

The white-and-gray cat has an even better trick: no fur comes off when she's combed, but she leaves wads of fur wherever she sits.

Not being able to pick up and go at a momement's notice... and landlords not allowing pets, as Stefani mentioned (Cats? Dogs I can understand , but cats? Yes they are not loved by all it would seem).
My 2 cats are from outside and I think they wouldn't like it much if they didn't have access to the outdoors...
One has begun to wake me up at all hours, so i've begun to block the space between the floor and the door so as not to hear her mewing at 3am....

Maybe this is because I'm still dealing with kittens, but for me the biggest issue is the actual chaos they create (knocking over stacks of magazines, piles of mail, burrowing into clean clothes and merrily pulling stuff out of bags). Though, in typing this, I guess if I decreased the number of piles/stacks in my house, they'd have less to mess up.

Well, one of my cats eats plastic bags which is really annoying whenever I come back with any purchases or have guest visiting. He eats large sections out of the bag, and then inevitably gets sick afterwards - so it's a two part frustration.
My other cat eats plants and flowers and digs into dirt so I can never have a nice bouquet on the table or have my plants anywhere other than on the fridge.
But hey...I love them...so it's something I deal with.

I have one bratty cat who knocks things off the dresser in the middle of the night too! And now she's torn a hole in the fabric under my box spring and now she climbs in there and sleeps between the springs. She likes to scratch right underneath my head in the middle of the night. Every time I roll over at night she squeaks at me. Is there something I can put under the bed to keep her out or do I need to lock her out? Grrrr.

We just bought a new home and practically ran into the Humane Society to adopt what we found to be the best puppy-up until the first poop on our spanking new carpet...one more poop and many pees later, I'm wondering what was I thinking! At this point I just want more than Nature's Miracle...Can someone tell me the secrets to cleaning rugs and ridding the odor of urine?...

Haydee - try the bissell 'little green steam machine' or something like that. It's great for spot cleaning carpet and upholstery.

The sponataneous vacation is no longer an option, my biggest lament and the purposeful placement of plants and flowers so they don't get devoured by the kitty. But compared to the stories above SHE IS AN OBSOLUTE ANGEL!

And due to my feebleness when it comes to pruning plants, she has actually turned one scraggly house plant into quite a fullsome, thick specimen due to her sporadic nibblings.

My gleanings from dealing with all of the above:

1) For keeping kitty from eating plants: get them their own patch of wheatgrass to chew on. Farmers market, best deals.

2) if pet is doing their business on surfaces other than where they should be, check into the health of the animal. Repeatedly. (A chronic urinary tract infection was not found until it bcame acute and then cost me over $1000 and interminable stress and headache, meanwhile kitty is peeing EVERYWHERE due to stress and a painful bladder. Who knew? She's a totally different cat now.) Also, and this is crucial, clean, dispose, anything to de-odorfy the criminal area. You need to dissuade them from going there again. Send the rug out to get professionally cleaned and then leave it in the closet for a while until the behavior is disassociated. Sometimes, the rug may never go down again. Couches: need to be put up vertically so the animal can no longer jump on top to pee on it, for example. There are sprays on the market to train pets not to pee somewhere. They've never worked for me, but others swear by them. Every pet is different and you need to experiment to find what works.

For cats, keep the litter box really really clean, poor thing has to go in it several times a day and we all know how finicky and clean the cats like to keep themselves.

I am clueless as to how to get them to stop the nighttime howlings and rampagings and chucking stuff off of surfaces.

However, there are many resources on ... the ... internet! Like, a great site is Holisticat -- it's a yahoo newsgroup that you can join and/or read the many articles cached there. Many problems are solved through change of diet, believe it or not.

Also I remember reading something somewhere (search engines are best here, since many natural animal food companies maintain great info sites) where running the cat around and exhausting her before bedtime sometimes keeps the 4 am stuff at bay.

That said, I too marvel at the amount of fuzz and litter box detritus scattered around the apt. And I vaccuum every day, several times a day. All for love.

The definitive solution to urine smells:
Anti-Icky Poo. I sounds like a commercial for these people, but damn does it work! They made some kind of genetically engineered enzyme that actually eats odors as they're released (good for the hot sumemr day down the line when cat pee revisits you) and was the ONLY way to get cat pee smell out of an inner spring futuon mattress (yuck!) It's a totally usable piece of furniture today. The only downside: it's quite expensive. But unlike Nature's Miracle, it really does work miracles:
http://www.antiickypoo.com/c-antiickypoo.html

someday i'd like to get a grown-up sofa. does anyone have any tips on breaking cats of the furniture-scratching habit? it seems impossible! we've tried getting scratching posts as a more desireable alternative to the chair/couch/boxspring, but nothing seems as appealing as clawing the furniture.

does nail clipping help? i doubt we'd get out of the clipping session unbloodied, but if it was a significant improvement i'd give it a whirl.

someone suggested softpaws to me a while back. has anyone tried them?

http://www.softpaws.com/about.html

I have a huge problem I have 3 cats two long hairs and one 12yr old female the 12yr old was just caught taking a pee in my Huge house plant and after further investigation I think she is doing this often. Now I need to catch the twins, If they have been doing this also. My question is what can I do to stop this. I don't want to throw out my plant nor the cat. lol Anyone out there with a suggestion.

cat lover