Six years ago, my husband and I were moving boxes in my parent’s dairy farm and came across a batch of four kittens. At that time we didn’t want to disturb them because they were quite young – so we adored them from afar. However, one little ball of white and fluffy fur had already seemed to imprint on the two of us. This is how Stewart, our now six year old FEMALE cat got her name.
For almost 6 months we tried to get Stewart to catch onto the outdoor cat ways. We tried to teach her how to hunt, climb a tree and defend herself all the while taking her with us while we milked cows, plowed the field and put in hay. But for some reason, Stewart just could not develop any natural street smarts.
Stewart has many adventures from her days of life on the farm, but for today I want to share our challenges with you in training her to stop getting on to our table and countertops.
When we first brought Stewart home to stay, she had been used to going where she liked and doing what she pleased and getting on top of our countertops was no exception. At first we coughed up more hairballs than she did with the amount of hair lightly floating into our food. And you can forget about Christmas baking unless you needed to floss at the same time – there was hair everywhere!
Onto Google we searched – ‘how to keep your cat off the countertop’. The first thing that we tried was lining all our flat baking sheets along the edges of the counter, so that when Stewart jumped up she would knock down the flatware and get a scare. Well, our little non-street smart kitty sure showed us. No fear or any scare, and eventually she figured out just to jump even further. Leaving us with us a lot of flatware to wash up. Two points Stewart, Mom and Dad ZERO.
The second attempt, was tin foil. We were told that if we lined both the table and countertops with sheets of tin foil, that the noise was sure to scare Stewart, and keep her away from all areas. After two rolls placed one morning, we came home at lunch time to a confetti of silver all over our kitchen and living room – in the TINEST pieces that you can imagine. Stewart had a ball! For months afterward, we were still finding tin foil and to this day when we use the stuff, she comes running thinking her most favourite toy is out to play!
Our third attempt seemed bizarre to us, but we had to give it a try – Double sided tape. I scrapbook, so to me this was a heart breaker and a waste of perfectly good tape. It was said that the sticky part of the tape would annoy Stewart and deter her from all surfaces. The tape worked great, to get kitty litter out between Stewart’s toes!
Our last and final shot was asking the professionals for the help that we so clearly needed. We found online that a local pet store carried a motion detector spray bottle that would spray water once set off. We had to set this device up in different areas of the countertop so that Stewart would finally get the idea that she really wasn’t welcome up on the counters. It didn’t take Stewart long to figure the device out and to this day she had never come onto the table or countertops again. We actually stopped using the device within a few months of buying it, and have lent it out to a friend with a similar problem.
Most of the time, there is no need for such extreme measures like we have taken to help deter our furry critters from going where they do not belong, however Stewart was the exception. This process did show use that you can’t always figure it out on your own, and sometimes having a little help from the experts really does pay off!
Written by: Keltie MacIntosh
