DP's views on cats upstairs & cats outside, is he right? Surely not!

[MagratsHair]

Sorry to start another thread but I'm not going forward in rehoming any rescue cat without talking a couple of issues through with DP & I'd like to do it tonight. I have never had a cat before so its all new to me & I need your opinions please as I think he's being a bit old fashioned.

DP says that he does not like cats upstairs, he says his nan had cats that never went upstairs & he does not like animals in bedrooms. So my query is, how on earth would you keep a cat from going upstairs without being cruel to it? I can't think of any way to stop a cat from entering a bedroom short of keeping the door closed.

Also he says its a nonsense that cats should stay inside at night & we would be denying the cat its normal instincts & behaviour if we do not let it out at night.

He was also worried about fighting, there are foxes in our road & also 2 well established cats 2 doors down that are not friendly to humans let alone another cat & he doesn't want our new rescued cat to be hurt.

What do you think?

=.=

Cats upstairs: good luck with trying to stop them

Cats inside / outside: get a catflap. If you don't want all the neighbours' cats round having a midnight party I recommend a Sureflap microchip catflap that recognises your cats' microchip and only lets them in.

FWIW DH had similar Views about certain areas of the house being verboten to cats, and shutting them out all night. It lasted all of 5 minutes of kittens mewing piteously outside the bedroom door at 3am for the bedroom ban to go, and once they figured out that they could wake us by singing under our bedroom window at dawn the catflap was a done deal.

I agree with your DH. I loathe the idea of pet hair in bedrooms - the obvious way to do that is keeping bedroom doors closed, as you say.

Also, I think cats should be able to wander in and out as they please. Why not?

he doesnt want a cat?
it is going to be your fault when cat goes upstairs?
i agree about the cat's instincts and night hunting, but you don't keep cats indoors at night for those reasons. it is done for their safety and to protect wildlife
if you are re-homing, an indoor cat is the type to look for. it isnt cruel to keep it downstairs, just hard

I think he should get a dog. More suited to his requirements.

Trying to keep cats downstairs and out of the bedroom will be introducing such a hassle into your life you may as well not bother IMO. They will want access, to wherever you have access! There is a saying that the best way to get a cat to use a particular room, is to shut the door.

Also - it is best to keep them in at night to reduce their chances of being run over.

Cats will do whatever they please, you can't train them!

I think a dog sounds more suitable!

Love that kitty emoticon though!

=.=

Our cat doesn't go upstairs, we have always kept the hall door closed anyway. It isn't an issue, even when she comes in the front door she doesn't even seem to register the stairs are there. She has the run of downstairs (living room, dining room, utility room, kitchen and playroom) with a section of the playroom just for her, cat tree, carpeted shelves floor to ceiling pole, low bed, high bed and igloo.
She does not have a cat flap but I leave the kitchen window open during the day while I am in and she is in and out.
She stays indoors at night, I was always told cats get into more fights at night abd are more likely to get run over.

He's happy to have a cat, we can't do a dog as he was bitten as a child & has a fear of dogs. We also already have a cat flap as my mum had one put in the back door in the 80's so she could hang the tumble drier hose out of it :)

No it won't be my fault when it goes upstairs but I'm concerned that his nan kept the cats downstairs by smacking or squirting or somesuch which I won't entertain so I was wondering if he's being normal & all of you have methods which you use to keep your cats downstairs....

My sister who has had a couple of rescue cats has just messaged me to say that cats should be kept indoors at night as this is when they do most of their killing... I just thought that a cat could have free rein & we would keep the catflap open for it to come & go as it pleases tbh. Am I massively naive?

You know, I hadn't thought about an indoor cat....

I have never had to squirt or smack my cat to keep her downstairs. We have had her since a kitten though so maybe that makes a difference?
She is perfectly content to stay down here and never tries to get into the hall to the stairs. If you had open plan stairs though I could see it being an issue.

we have a cat flap. To be honest in the summer our cat lives in the garden sleeps in the plants, sits on the fence and watches the sunrise etc etc.

In the winter, he only goes out to the loo, he wouldn't be out at night in the cold when there is a nice warm sofa to sit on!

I let ours come and go as he pleases, really can't see the point of trying to shut it in, he will decide he wants to go out at 3 am and then you don't know if he needs the loo or wants to go hunting! I don't have a litter tray.

You can try squirting and smacking, but it won't work. A cat will go where he wants. But in our old house there was a door at the bottom of the stairs and he didn't go up, so even in our new house he is more used to being down stairs.

Our cats have access to the catflap at night but are lazy and choose to stay in. Neither are hunters and we live in a quiet area otherwise they would be locked in at night for their safety.

We no longer allow them in the bedroom and keep the door closed because I was sick of muddy footprints on the duvet and windowsill, also hair all over the duvet and curtains. When we move and have a door into the hallway they will not be allowed upstairs at all - I do most of the cleaning and I am fed up of cat hair/dirt throughout the house.

Cats are ideally kept in at night as the number for road accidents and cat fight is much higher at night. Many cat charities will ask you to promise to keep them in at night. They adjust quickly.
Tell your husband that actually keeping cats in a house is not very 'natural' and they should be sole hunters with large territories so staying in at night is just one of many many changes that domestic cats have from a 'natural' state.
If you feed the cats downstairs and provide beds, perches and scratching posts many cats will stay in that 'core' area. They would probably lie to go upstairs to have a sleep however.
Shutting doors would really be the only way to avoid cats in bedrooms imo.

Regardless of whether or not you eventually let a cat out at night, for the first three weeks you would need to keep it indoors. After that, well it is certainly safer for a cat to be in at night (as that's when most rtas occur), but if you have a flap and are in a relatively safe location you can allow it to choose for itself. The likelyhood is it would stay in most of the time in winter and be out more in summer.

You can't stop a cat going anywhere unless you keep the bedroom door closed. That's entirely up to you. My bed is covered in cats - but each to his own.

Your cat's garden will be his own territory so probably won't have too many skirmishes unless he wanders. And neutered cats don't generally get into that many fights. Foxes aren't really a threat.

If you're going to be strict about where they can go in the house I don't think an indoor cat would be fair. I have two. They need a lot of attention and would constantly be crying if I shut them out of anywhere. They won't leave the door alone when I'm in the shower, even!

If you can't shut rooms off, you can't keep cats out. So unless you have a door to your upstairs, you can't do it. My sister shuts her cats in her massive kitchen/diner at night - she's done it ever since they were kittens and they're just used to it. But they have two of them - I wouldn't do that with a single cat/kitten.

Similarly, although my two have the run of the house, they don't often sleep on my bed because they sleep together

There was always a cat in the house when I was growing up. DM was very strict about no cats in bedrooms but you can not stop a cat going upstairs. All our cats loved our 1970's house. The landing with slats they could look down on us in a superior way

When I moved out, I got the NDN cat long story that had been a rescue and she wore me down with her pitiful crying, she slept on my bed.

None of the cats stayed out at night.

You can't stop the cats going upstairs. You can keep them out of bedrooms by shutting the doors, and you can similarly limit the amount of the house they have access to at night. Ours have access to the whole house during the day, and just the utility room ("their" room) and the kitchen at night. Occasionally, if I have left a cake or something out, I will shut them out of the kitchen too. This does depend on the she of your house and the thickness of walls, though - ours are thick enough that we don't hear any protests. The main reason for limiting them is that they will otherwise (a) play chase up and down the wooden stairs at 3am in a passable imitation of a small herd of elephants (b) bring us "presents" in the middle of the night (c) decide to eat their midnight mouse snack in the middle of our bedroom carpet or (d) all of the above

..which brings me to locking them in. If you can't stand the thought of them killing stuff, or squabbling with neighbourhood cats, then a cat flap with keys and an "in only" setting would allow you to impose a curfew. They won't like it, but would get used to it. Ours come and go as they please, but we are in a very rural area with no cat competition, so it's the local rodent population that suffer, rather than the cats, and I don't have to deal with a litter tray.

Oh, and it is a fundamental law of cat nature IME that they need to be on the other side of any closed door, so if you plan on shutting doors, expect them to get scratched. Our old cat used to climb the front door to use the door knocker, even though she had a perfectly good cat flap, because the kitchen door was shut so she couldn't reach the sofa and knocking on the front door was a more effective way to get us to do as we were told than shouting at the kitchen door.

I would absolutely hate a cat in the bedroom, I just couldn't live with that, so I won't have a cat. I don't see how you can stop it otherwise. As PP said, closing the door isn't going to be sufficient as they will cry/scratch at the other side until you open it.

The nan smacked a cat?

Bin the dp, get a cat & keep it in overnight because being killed by a car is not normal for them at all.

The nan is long dead.

We have a sureflap and she comes and goes at will. She brings in wildlife, sometimes dead, sometimes alive..... She has 3 bells attached to her collar so it permanently sounds like Christmas in our house but it doesn't seem to help.

She goes upstairs and only goes into DS2s room because he encourages her to do so. we just keep our door shut at night and she doesn't like our bedroom anyway - not sure why, she just doesn't come in. She has a basket in the upstairs hall outside the cupboard wth the hot water tank in - you need a crowbar to prise her fat fluffy arse out of it. She also has a basket on the desk in the study - she basically goes between one and the other. She also doesn't like going on the worktop or like eating people food. if it wasn't for the wildlife and her habit of sitting in the drive staring you down when you want to drive on it, she'd be a perfect cat

Our cat scratches at the downstairs doors if they are shut by accident. She never ever scratches at the one to the hall and stairs, its not inevitable.