at wit's end with this cat...PLEASE help

[julia123]

I'm absolutely desperate about this situation. 

Male tabby - neutered - 10 years old - I've had him 8 years - and he LOVES to be outside.  HOWLS to go outside.  We live in the city with an unfenced yard.  I've tried a harness, I've tried a long leash on a spike, I've tried putting him in a mesh box outside:  he wasn't having it.  He wants to be LOOSE in the yard.

I think I posted a few years ago and much of the advice was:  make him stay inside.  I tried that for a couple of summers, but he still howled to go outside all summer long.  I thought he'd forget about it, but he never did.

This summer, since he seemed to want to be outside so badly, and I wanted him to be happy.  I bought flea meds and started letting him go outside every day for a little while when I worked in the garden.  While outside, I had to watch him constantly, because he kept trying to sneak out of the yard.  He has been getting 30 - 40 minutes a day of outdoor time, which is a real sacrifice for me because I'm busy but, like I said, I want him to be happy. 

The past two weeks, the howling has intensified and it's the worst that it's EVER been.  He howls all night.  He howls all day.  He wants to be outside.  When he does go out, he refuses to come back in and I have to drag him kicking and screaming.  I closed the door to the sunroom so he couldn't sit by the back door and howl...now he howls by the kitchen door to be let into the sun room.  I got a squirt bottle and started squirting him when he started the howling - it doesn't work.  I hate chasing him and squirting him all day long - he's miserable and I'm miserable - but I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in weeks and I'm wearing down. 

WHY is he so desperate to go outside?  WHY can't he be happy with the outdoor time he does get?  WHAT can I do to make the howling stop?  SHould I just keep squirting him whenever he starts up?  It's at least one episode every half hour - all day, all night.  It seems so cruel to squirt him, and it doesn't seem to work.  Should I just never let him go outside again?  That seems cruel too but the more he goes, the more he wants to go.  But the years he's stayed inside, he's never forgotten his desire to go outside and STILL howls...just not this much.

PLEASE help.

 

[sugarcatmom]

Is it possible to construct an outdoor enclosure (that's bigger than a box) which could somehow be attached to a window so he could go in and out as he pleases? My DH recently modified a portable greenhouse so that my indoor kitties could get some fresh air and sunshine. They absolutely love it. While not big enough for them to run around much in it, there are 3 levels of shelves for different viewpoints, and some grass they can munch on (and bugs!!).



I would recommend no more squirting with the water bottle. It's obviously not solving the problem, and could be making it worse as it increases your cat's anxiety while indoors. Does he have lots of interesting stuff to do inside? Cat condos in the window, interactive toys, cat TV, etc?

 

[julia123]

Wow, that looks amazing!  We couldn't do that at our current house (no available downstairs windows, the way the house is set up!) but we hope to move in the next 6 months and I'll see if we can set something like that up!

 

[iris]

I would assume he is neutered right?

 

[malla]

My big cat is the same way - obsessed with getting outside. 

 

[aeevr]

is he an only cat? Perhaps another cat will help alleviate his boredom.

 

[julia123]

We have another cat, going on 2 yrs old, who has no interest in going outside.  My 'problem' cat has ZERO interest in playing with the other cat or our dog (they've all been together a while) - his all-consuming interest = going outside.  He won't play with toys, turns his nose up at catnip, no interest in climbing, etc., etc.  If he's not begging to go outside, he's sleeping. 
 

 

[malla]

We have another cat, going on 2 yrs old, who has no interest in going outside.  My 'problem' cat has ZERO interest in playing with the other cat or our dog (they've all been together a while) - his all-consuming interest = going outside.  He won't play with toys, turns his nose up at catnip, no interest in climbing, etc., etc.  If he's not begging to go outside, he's sleeping. 
 

Sounds like my big cat. Totally obsessed with getting outside. Sometimes plays, usually just agitated with the other cats. She's a royal pain but I love her cranky butt anyway!

 

[bigperm20]

Maybe it's just big ole' neutered males that are like this! My cousin had a 27 lb solid white male who would knock you over getting out the door when you came to visit trying to get outside. He just mostly wanted to graze though.

 

[rafm]

My large nuetered male doesn't yowl to go out, however, he knows the word 'out' and when we ask the dogs, he tears a path to the back door and usually beats the dogs there. He's 11 years old and other than when he was a very tiny kitten, he's never been outside. Once the dogs and I are outside, Fred will sit at the door and cry. It's pitiful. Sometimes, when he's feeling really spry, he will leap over the dogs and get out. :lol3: He doesn't get far, just collapses on the patio and rolls. It's really cute.

I can see where the crying would be annoying though. The problem you have is that you have reinforced with him that yowling works. In his cause/effect brain, he is randomly rewarded for the yowling. He doesn't know when he'll be rewarded, just that at some point he will be. Take this example, let's say that every time you get to work, your boss gives you a cookie when you say 'good morning', so you want your cookie so you go to work every day and tell your boss 'good morning'. Then, one day, you don't get a cookie and your brain says 'hum, didn't get a cookie today, maybe he didn't hear me, I'll try again tomorrow'. So you go to work the next morning and say 'good morning' a little louder. Still no cookie so you say to yourself, I might stop saying good morning if he isn't going to give me a cookie. 3rd morning, BAM, you get a cookie. So now your brain starts thinking 'Ok, got a cookie today, what did I do differently today that made him give me a cookie?'. So now you have no idea when you'll get a cookie but you say 'good morning every day on the chance you'll get a cookie.

That is what you are doing with the cat. You let him out sometimes so in his mind, the yowling is working. If you want to extinguish the behavior of yowling to go out, your negative reinforcer must occur OUTSIDE, not inside. If you are giving him negative consequences INSIDE, you are actually encouraging him to want to go out. His cause/effect brain is saying "If I yowl, sometimes I go outside, and sometimes I get sprayed with water. Hell, going outside is a better reward than getting sprayed is an aversive, I'm going to take my chances". Outside needs to be unpleasant, not inside.

One more example of cause/effect. We feed our cats on the counter. There is a chair next to the counter so the old cats can get up there. Our little dog will use the chair to get on the counter to get the cat food, which is a big no-no. For the first year of her life, we free fed so she was constantly rewarded for getting on the counter. Our aversive of scolding her was not nearly as rewarding as eating the cat food so this continued. The second year we stopped free-feeding but for about a month, she still got on the counter but was never rewarded so her trips up became less and less frequent until they stopped all-together. Until a couple of weeks ago. I left some food out because one of the cats was still eating, I walked out of the room tout some laundry away, when I came back, Abby was on the counter. Now that the behavior was reinforced, even ONCE, we are starting over again. She checks the counter every day now. It shouldn't take as long to extinguish this behavior this time around because she knows the expectation.

So, every time you let him go outside, especially if he is yowling when you let him out, you are reinforcing the yowling. Stop letting him out when he yowls and stop using an aversive inside. In fact, would only use an aversive when you are outside coming in. If he's sitting at the back door when you are trying to come inside, squirt him as you come in the door.

 

[p3 and the king]

Not all cat walks or outdoor enclosures have to be attached to the house somehow.  You can find them for just about any situation.  You can build your own, too.  Many people choose to do this because not only is it cheaper but they can make it as they want, as large or small as they want and not have to spend a lot for something that isn't exactly as they wish.  But  they have them available at any price range... Here is a page I found to give you some ideas.

http://www.catsofaustralia.com/cat-enclosures-3.htm

I have the window walk... I can open a window and they can either just sit just outside the window or go out and all the way around.  It gives them the best of both worlds with safety in mind.