PetSet Boutique

It may seem obvious, but if you have an indoor cat, you need a litter pan. A cat litter pan is the main part of the box and holds the litter, and catches any that is scattered (or thrown) outside of the box.

You can easily scatter the litter yourself when cleaning or refilling the box, or the cat will do it himself. If he has any sense of manners at all, he’ll bury his waste and wipe his feet on the way out of the box, often tossing litter all over your house. So, instead of being left with a frustrating mess that you need to daily (or several times a day) vacuum or sweep up, just buy a litter pan with tall walls and make sure it all stays inside.

If your pet is an indoor cat, chances are the thing he wants most in the world is to go outside. Every time you open a door, he tries to dash out it, and every time you open a window, he wants to sit in it.

So give your pet a taste of the outdoors with a cat window perch. He’ll be able to sit at it for hours, watching the world outside in comfort and safety. It’ll be his new favorite place to sleep and hang out, and it may even reduce those mad-dashes out the door.

The most common negative behavioral issue for pet ferrets is inappropriate biting.  Ferrets have very thick skin and interact by biting one another quite hard, so appropriate play with humans has to be learned.   One way for a ferret owner to discourage inappropriate biting is through positive reinforcement.  If your ferret plays with you without biting, give treats and/or praise.  Scruffing is the method a mother ferret would use if her baby ferret bit too hard, and if you employ this method, it will establish you as the alpha ferret. 

Distracting a ferret with a mouse cat toy or other toy when he bites inappropriately can be effective.  Another possible method to curb inappropriate biting is to hold the ferret against the ground until he ceases moving, releasing him immediately at that point.  A time out is yet another option.  Place the ferret in a cage or carrier alone, but not for more than five minutes.

Even provided the perfect cat litter box, your pet might prove to be fussy about its use. You need to select a size and style she will use today. And you need to be flexible should she change her mind tomorrow. As your cat goes through the stages of her life, her preferences, as well as her ability to use the litter box, may also change.

A key factor is to be as patient as possible and not lose your cool.

Lift the cat litter box and tilt it toward the back. Shake the box gently up and down. You should see urine balls emerge and float toward the top. Repeat this step, lifting the box and shaking a few times but this time at the opposite end. At this point, the majority of the waste is now on the surface and available for easy removal. If shaking the box causes the litter to throw off a lot of dust, skip this step. The dustiness of the litter will depend on the brand and quality that you buy.

Remove clumps from the edges. All too often you’ll find a clump of litter cemented to the box. This stuff is clay and it sticks well. Do not attempt to scrape this mess off. It will fall into crumbs that are impossible to remove with a scoop and will contaminate your litter and the box will stink of urine no matter what. This is important - keep the pee balls intact to the extent possible. Here’s the trick: remove the cemented waste by lifting the box so that you can tap on the outside of the box and knock off the cling on in one piece. If you have a liner, pull on it so that the clump turns on its side and falls off of the plastic.

Scoop waste into a zip bag, zip close, then put into a small trash can with a lid. Take out with the trash. You will never have a smell or the mess of a spill.

Replenish the litter. Use enough litter up to 2 inches tall, since most cats (especially long-haired) won’t use litter that’s deeper or might dig a big hole, causing litter to spill over the sides. Use your scoop to grade the gravel so that it slopes up high on both ends of the litter box, forming a gentle trough. This slope is key to keeping your box clean - you want to maximize the depth of the litter where the cat pees so that the litter can absorb the waste before it reaches the plastic sides or bottom of the box and sticks to it like glue. Cats, especially male cats, tend to urinate at either end of the box, rarely in the middle.

The domestic cat has had a very long history with man that  dating back over 9,500 years.  Cats were often considered evil with the Devil because of their aloof and independent nature, cats were killed en masse.If this bias toward cats had not existed, local rodent populations could have been kept down, lessening the spread of plague-infected fleas from host to host.

I am glad that cats are the way they are today because I love to take my cat Sabrina everywhere I go in her cat tote carrier.