I was adopted by Bootsie a little over a year ago. She was a poor, starving young kitty someone dumped on our company's property. My wife chose the name Bootsie. I wanted to name her Katisha after the daughter-in-law elect of the Mikado, but Bootsie it was.
A few months later Bootsie started urinating outside the litter box. These situations are usually stress related if all medical reasons are ruled out as they were in her case. I think I know the cause of the first incident. Our son started giving violin lessons at our house one day a week. On one of those days Bootsie was in our bedroom sleeping peacefully away until she was woken by a screeching violin. She was probably too afraid to get out the bedroom to go to the litter box. She urinated on our bed, on my wife's side. The problem is that once a cat starts urinating on a bed or piece of furniture, they return to that same item again. We had to ban her from the bedroom. Another time she urinated on my wife's dirty laundry.
So, it was beginning to get down to my wife or the cat. Feliway helped immensely but clicker training helped a great deal, too. No urination problems in the last 6 months. We still keep the bedroom door shut, however.
I purchased Karen Pryor's book and kit. It was very slow at first since Bootsie is not really interested in food or treats. In one way that is fortunate since we don't have a begging cat at dinner time or one that is constantly begging for food in the kitchen while you are trying to prepare a meal. I had a hard time finding the right treat. I was using small amounts of Fancy Feast, but that was difficult to manage and messy. I finally found that she liked Bonito flakes, which we call, "stinky fish skin," but at least it is dry and easy to manage and best of all she loves it.
After two weeks of training, with a maximum of 4 clicks a session with the messy cat food, I was beginning to think Bootsie was "special," but then she started to catch on. I could see the kitty brain working. Now we can't stop. We usually do the training at 8:00 PM, but she starts begging and doing her tricks at 6:30 to 7:00. She can go through a hoop, perch on her cat post, shake, lie down, come on command (most of the time), bat a ball off a box on command, scratch on command, leap from box to box, leap over a hurdle, stand on her hind feet and raise her front paws over her head to touch the target stick and probably a few others I have forgotten. She is learning new tricks faster, too. We have to keep learning new tricks to keep both of our interests up.
There seems to be no end,. It is like an addiction, but it is a fun and healthy one.
