Congratulations! Besides being fun, and extremely loving animals that may create your life happier. In today’s Rango Planet article, we will explain the top 7 mistakes cat owners make. Cat’s area unit clean pets, it’s not necessary to require them for a walk associate degreed adapt well to life in a flat.
Although cats area unit animals that area unit simple to keep up and look after, it’s necessary to understand some typical mistakes in their upbringing to forestall unwanted behavior. At Animal Wised we’ll make a case for what the seven biggest mistakes area unit initial time cat house owners create so it’s easier for you to worry for the new member of the family.
1. Treating cats as if they’re dogs
It’s onerous to imagine a cat enjoying fetch, or a dog defrayal it’s waking hours preening, thus why would we have a tendency to expect equivalent behaviours from our fur babies once it involves housetraining?
According to cat behaviorist and author of The Cat verbalize, Mieshelle Nagelschneider, a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to raising four-legged friends will have unfortunate consequences. and that is one of the top mistakes cat owners make.
2. Solely providing one litter box
It’s not simply H2O that felines tend to fuss over. It seems they additionally like having over one litter box to decide on from.
‘In nature, cats wish to separate their excreting and shitting behaviours,’ explains Nagelschneider. ‘In the house, having only 1 box wherever there’s each excreting and shitting will cause a cat to urinate outside of the box.’
Her rule of thumb is to produce one litter box per cat and another. ‘For example, if you’ve got 2 cats, you would like 3 boxes,’ she says. and that is the second one of the top mistakes cat owners make.
3. Golf shot all of the litter boxes in one space
‘Multiple locations really trump the quantity of boxes,’ she says.
‘If you’ve got 5 cats, however will solely have 3 boxes, it’s essential that those 3 boxes square measure placed in several areas round the house.’
Why the requirement for separation? In keeping with Nagelschneider, it goes back to a cat’s territorial instincts.
‘It’s like ten roommates making an attempt to use one toilet within the house. Once a minute, you’re reaching to begin obtaining irritated with them,’ she says.
Competition over family litter boxes will cause lasting injury, even inflicting cats to unfriendly one another over time.
Read also: 6 Foods that you simply shouldn’t be feeding Your Cat
4. Making a ‘cat room’
Fight the urge to cluster all of your cat’s accessories – from scratching posts to perches to beds – in one selected ‘cat space.’
According to Nagelschneider, scattering pet appurtenances round the house a lot of accurately reflects conditions within the wild, and creates what she calls a ‘land of plenty’ – an environment that reduces competition between cats.
She even recommends separating the food bowl from the water dish, as cats instinctively avoid water close to dead prey that within the wild would possible be contaminated with bacterium.
5. Shopping for a lined litter box
Unlike humans, cats don’t want privacy so as to try to their business. In fact, in keeping with Nagelschneider, the entire opposite is true.
Instead, they’ll select a comparatively exposed, open location that affords them an honest read of potential predators.
6. Not scooping cat litter typically enough
Even if your feline friends have not practiced the good outdoors themselves, they still possess the survival instincts of their wildcat ancestors.
One of the strongest of these instincts is that they have to be compelled to bury their own waste; a habit that effectively throws predators offs their scent.
Once inside – and restricted to the utilization of a litter box – a housecat’s try at burial solely will such a lot to mask the scent; thus the importance of standard scooping.
‘Once per week merely isn’t enough,’ says Nagelschneider. ‘Even with an honest clumping litter, you must be scooping daily, and substitution the litter fully each thirty days.’
According to Nagelschneider, fresh, clean litter is that the best thanks to stop messes outside the litter box, which has consequences on an oversized scale.
Read also: How to understand your cat better
7. Failing to foster a family ambience
In order for cats to measure harmoniously beneath one roof, Nagelschneider says it’s vital for them to recognize one another as a family – notwithstanding whether or not or not they’re really connected.
Humans will facilitate during this regard by facilitating the unfold of what’s called ‘group scent.’
‘If you’ve got a five-cat family, you’ll need every cat to own the scent of all 5 cats on them,’ she says. ‘This shared scent is sort of a family’s family name.’
Spreading this cluster scent is as straightforward as brushing every cat within the family with an equivalent brush sometimes every day. Not solely will the method foster friendlier behaviour between cats, however it additionally encourages higher sharing of litter boxes, as well.
