Hello everyone,
Let me start this by explaining that I'm an action figure collector as much as I am a cat lover, they are my 2 favorite things in the world. My office is my collection room and where I work 8 hours of the day, but also where I spend most of my time doing different hobbies - in other words, I will not have this room off-limits to my cats as it is where I am most of the time. I have many shelving units with toys splayed out and this has never been an issue with past cats as they had zero interest in exploring these shelves - it's a completely different story with my newest furballs.
I adopted them 2 years ago and I thought with time their curiosity would wane, but it only really has for one. The most reckless and restless of the 2 is quite insistent on jumping on the shelves and making a mess of everything, and always tries to reach the highest point in the room. For many of the units, I used transparent polycarbonate plastic sheets to remove access to the shelves, but there are smaller units she can just jump on top of and there's really nothing I can do to prevent that. I just yell at her to come down and she immediately does so, but the second my back is turned, she's at it again. This can repeat several time before I lose patience and kick her out of the room and close the door for a little. For a moment I thought it was because she wanted to be perched high to have a view of the room, so I installed a shelf just for her almost to the ceiling, and there was already one in front of the window too, and she'll use them, but the habit hasn't left at all. I've tried stopping everything I was doing just to give her my full attention to see what exactly she's trying to get out of me, and she won't play, she won't have food, she'll accept some petting, but often she'll drop from my lap and go straight for the shelves again. I'm quite at a loss. I don't know how to discourage this habit, or what positive reinforcement I can offer to take her attention away from the shelves.
Any suggestions?
Let me start this by explaining that I'm an action figure collector as much as I am a cat lover, they are my 2 favorite things in the world. My office is my collection room and where I work 8 hours of the day, but also where I spend most of my time doing different hobbies - in other words, I will not have this room off-limits to my cats as it is where I am most of the time. I have many shelving units with toys splayed out and this has never been an issue with past cats as they had zero interest in exploring these shelves - it's a completely different story with my newest furballs.
I adopted them 2 years ago and I thought with time their curiosity would wane, but it only really has for one. The most reckless and restless of the 2 is quite insistent on jumping on the shelves and making a mess of everything, and always tries to reach the highest point in the room. For many of the units, I used transparent polycarbonate plastic sheets to remove access to the shelves, but there are smaller units she can just jump on top of and there's really nothing I can do to prevent that. I just yell at her to come down and she immediately does so, but the second my back is turned, she's at it again. This can repeat several time before I lose patience and kick her out of the room and close the door for a little. For a moment I thought it was because she wanted to be perched high to have a view of the room, so I installed a shelf just for her almost to the ceiling, and there was already one in front of the window too, and she'll use them, but the habit hasn't left at all. I've tried stopping everything I was doing just to give her my full attention to see what exactly she's trying to get out of me, and she won't play, she won't have food, she'll accept some petting, but often she'll drop from my lap and go straight for the shelves again. I'm quite at a loss. I don't know how to discourage this habit, or what positive reinforcement I can offer to take her attention away from the shelves.
Any suggestions?
