What do people think about spraying cats with water as a punishment?

[Rollergirl1]

My cat is repeatedly jumping up on the work-tops in the kitchen and it's driving me mad! He's only started doing it in the last month and he doesn't seem to learn. I have been shouting no and giving him a tap on the nose every time that he does it, but it still doesn't dissuade him.

Today I have taken to spraying him with water every time he does it and he really really doesn't like it. I am hoping that he might learn that this is what happens if he gets up on the side. But I also worry that it might be a bit cruel too?

What do other people do to dissuade bad behaviour?

I tried that with all my 3. I gave up

It's no crueller than letting him out in the rain. It's water, not bleach.

I used to splash my cat with water when he got on the worktops. He learned quickly and when.he did climb up I only had to lean towards the tap and he would get off.

I think it's ok. It's not harmful but if the cat doesn't like it and gets a squirt every time it might stop. I say might.

Nothing much phases my cats when they want to do something. I have the same problem with one of mine. We are locked in a battle of wits and I bet it's not me who wins. He just glares at me with a face and saunters off.

I've never found any problem with disciplining. My Siamese will learn a rule within hours (a firm NO and/or shutting outside the door does it fast) but even the non-Siamese have learned.

(I'll grant you that with the non-Siamese that 'learning' may sometimes amount to jumping down from a kitchen surface as they hear me coming - but that's better than nothing.)

I've found that the trick with rules is to have only a few but for the whole household to enforce them rigidly. Do you live alone? And if not, is everyone else signing up to the rule?

It doesn't work ime. They still do it but are more crafty about it.

My mum's cat used to do this and mum started rubbing half a lemon on the worktops every morning. This was a deterrent - the cat hated the smell.

Is there a way to keep him out of the kitchen? Baby gate or something?

funnily enough the worktops are the one place our cat doesn't go. Weird. Probably because there is too much stuff on them already!

Interestingly Eds, I've found with my Siamese boys that they recognize a 'wrong thought' as a sin. (Maybe other cats do so as well.) So you have to learn the signs that they're actually thinking about doing a bad thing (the distracted gaze etc) and reprove them for the thought. That reinforces.

Oh I know, mine is not siamese and she knows when something's wrong, ie she'll jump down when she hears me coming etc.

But the thing is to see it coming, you have to be there supervising and I'm not always in the right place when she decides to do something naughty

I just put preventative measures in place - you know, moving plates that I'm eating from, if I have to get up and answer the phone or something, so she doesn't have a way to steal my supper...keeping the sofas covered with blankets so she can't scratch them.

I sometimes wish she did not live here!

The scratching is relatively straightforward, Eds. They've got to have something to scratch so give them an 'authorized place'. (Eg find an old piece of upholstered furniture somewhere or beg from a relative or tack down a sample of (preferably good quality) carpet somewhere. Then - lots of praise if they use it and lots of reproving NOs if they use somewhere else. That should sort it pretty quickly.

We only have a few real No-Nos in the cozie household.

No going on kitchen surfaces.
No scratching in unauthorized places.
No biting in bed.

Apart from those, the boys are allowed to do pretty much as they want - but they tend not to want to misbehave once they're past the kitten stage and have learned the house rules.

thankyou...worth a try! she does it to the carpet now which thankfully seems quite resilient. She's nearly 14 and once she is no more, I won't have another cat, I will have uncovered sofas instead

Of course you'll have another cat. (People nearly always do.) So you might as well learn all the tricks now.

Euculiptus (spelt wrong) oil is good to put em off scratching in certain places. They don't like the smell! I always have a scratch post upstairs and one down, plus one of those bristle door mats.

My new generation of 3 cats (yes, I said I wouldn't have another after the last two died - I even got an extra as noone wanted her!) are all young and stupid, so we are going the no worktops rule now, they are learning. After being shouted at a few times, al I have to do is look at them now, and they get down.

My only problem, is the cat flap, two will use it, one of them refuses!

It is a good idea, I do a loud "pssst !!!" at the same time as I spray the water, and after a bit, just the pssst noise is enough to make them scarper.

I looked this up because I tried this with my kitten yesterday and felt mean, but it seemed to work. He is not allowed on the table while we are eating (the only time he wants to get on there) or to eat off our plates. Normally he jumps up a couple of times, then gives up and sits on a chair while we eat. But yesterday he kept jumping up, jumping on our shoulders, etc so I tried spraying him, having let him see the bottle I was using first. He didn't like it, and didn't get back up for a bit. When he did, I showed him the bottle and he looked at it, thought about it and got back down...

I searched online and a lot of people seem to think it's cruel and that the cat won't understand and/or will fear you. Well, he seemed to get it, and it hasn't stopped him from sitting on me purring, or sleeping curled around my head, so he blatantly doesn't fear me. I did feel mean, though!

I have never needed to punish a cat - my understanding is they don't process it. For worktops IME as long as you remove them every single time they get the idea pretty quickly.

Mine learnt not to go on them when I said a firm no but since moving house the kitchen window is too good a vantage point to look for his new mortal enemy so I am ignored.

If dh tells him off for being on there he cowers in a manner to suggest that he is violently beaten for such deviance and dh feels so guilty he gets consoled.

Oh he's got your DH taped.