Home Care: Helpful hints to keep your home the beautiful, peaceful, joyful environment that you and your cats deserve.
At Ragdolls Totally Terrific – RTT we learn a lot from watching My Cat From Hell – Animal Planet – Saturdays @ 8 pm.
Here Jackson Galaxy, Cat Behaviorist teaches human cat guardians how to properly care for the “difficult cat”. Ragdolls are not usually “difficult” although one can still learn many helpful hints from Jackson Galaxy that apply to the most docile felines!
Some of what I learn by watching Jackson Galaxy – My Cat From Hell:
- A 45 degree angle at the top of a playpen or Catio prevents cats from leaving the premises.
- Making a way for cats to get up off the floor to navigate a room builds self confidence.
- Install 1 litter box per cat in the home + 1 more to prevent peeing or pooping outside the litter box. Three cats in the home = 4 litter boxes in the home. 30 cats in the home = 31 litter-boxes
- When there is more than one pet in the home, make sure there is always an escape route and no areas that one pet can corner his housemate.
For more helpful hints watch My Cat From Hell at the following address:
http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/my-cat-from-hell
Speaking of Cat Boxes & Litter:
The kind of cat litter most cats prefer is the round little balls of clumping clay litter. Clumping clay litter should not be used with young kittens because curious kittens sometimes eat litter. Litter that clumps in the stomach and intestines can cause medical issues. Also tiny little balls of clumping clay are very difficult to keep off the floor…uhg! I have installed a two compartment enclosed cat box from Designer Pet Products for the adult cats to use. Most of the clay litter is caught in the second compartment as the cats exits the litter box house. http://www.designerpetproducts.com/designer-catbox-cat-litter-box-enclosures.html
The other option is the Breeze cat box system. This system solves the problem of both cat litter dust on the clothing and furniture and litter on the floor http://www.tidycats.com/Products/Breeze/
In open cat boxes for adults and kittens the litter pans are filled with chicken feed called poultry crumble NOT POULTRY PELLETS because Poultry Crumble-clumps and Poultry Pellets mold. Use only Poultry Crumble.
Ragdolls Totally Terrific provides a variety of potty boxes for the cats and kittens so that the type that fits best for you will be familiar to your kitten.
BEWARE OF EQUINE PINE: I believe the Equine Pine Pellets sold at Tractor Supply and similar to the Feline Pine Pellet litter caused a scabbiness to form on my first rescue Ragdolls nose who is pictured on each page; therefore I suggest not using it. Additional information suggests that kiln dried pine is fine but non kiln pine may cause problems. I do not use either due to the reasons stated above.
SCRATCHING YOUR FURNITURE- uh no!:
Do not leave kittens unattended in an area that contains furniture you do not want scratched until you have trained them to only scratch on their furniture and their scratching posts. The way to train the kittens is to spend time with them and catch them in the act. Then carry them to one of their scratching posts and with your fingernails scratch the post. They quickly catch on. Also place a small scratching post in front of any area the kitten it tempted to scratch. Once a kitten is shown where to scratch and where not to scratch they are very compliant and can be left confidently unsupervised. While your kitten(s) are in our home, they are trained in this way.
Caring for your Ragdoll pets and your home is fun and easy given the right information and easy training. See also Cat Care!