Kitten Tearing Up Tissues

[Mimi527]

At first our kitten had begun taking tissues out the bathroom waste basket and deliver them near where we slept. Now she’s carries them around and shreds them, she’ll even pull toilet paper or tissues right off the dispenser. How can I prevent this behavior from happening?

 

[Kflowers]

Get a small foot pedal trash can for the bathroom. You'll really want this when she progresses to things other than tissues.

Put the toilet paper in a drawer or cabinet. I'm not snarking at you, this is the solution that works. When she's older you may need to do the same with your paper towels.

 

[Mimi527]

Get a small foot pedal trash can for the bathroom. You'll really want this when she progresses to things other than tissues.

Put the toilet paper in a drawer or cabinet. I'm not snarking at you, this is the solution that works. When she's older you may need to do the same with your paper towels.

I kinda figured I’d hear that, I just don’t want to have to lock everything up.
Mostly because our bathroom doesn’t have room to keep the toilet paper in the cabinet due to space. It’s like a tiny little sink with a mirror small thin medicine cabinet. We also have limited kitchen space, she hasn’t started messing with the paper towels yet but she can certainly get up there. Thank you. I will have to order a small three drawer cabinet to squeeze in my BR if I don’t find any better solutions.

 

[marmoset]

Honestly, the only way to prevent it is to close the door to the bathroom. You could get a small refuse bin with a lid for the tissues and bathroom waste- but the toilet paper- she's going to be interested in that until she's grown out of it.

I still can't leave a roll of paper towels lying around the house. We keep them in a cabinet so they don't get shredded. But we haven't dealt with any toilet roll destruction in years.

People are going to say to make sure she has other things to play with and you need to use interactive toys to tire her out- and all that is true. But shredding tissues and toilet paper is just too tempting to a kitten. It's like putting bubble wrap in a room of people and thinking they won't be popping it.

 

[Kflowers]

If you put it where she can't get it, be sure to give her her own roll of toilet paper for her got cha' day.

 

[daftcat75]

Krista had a toilet paper shredding phase that she thankfully grew out of. But when she was shredding the rolls, I draped a hand towel over the toilet paper roll. That was enough for her to lose interest as it didn't shred.

(Pay no mind to the spare roll. This photo was for demonstration. Krista doesn’t shred paper anymore or that extra roll would definitely not be there. Or it would also be wrapped.)

 

[Mimi527]

If you put it where she can't get it, be sure to give her her own roll of toilet paper for her got cha' day.

Oh I will! I have all four of their birthdays as they were born in rescue. Two of them were our foster failures as well.

 

[Kflowers]

daftcat75 that's clever and a half!

 

[Mimi527]

Honestly, the only way to prevent it is to close the door to the bathroom. You could get a small refuse bin with a lid for the tissues and bathroom waste- but the toilet paper- she's going to be interested in that until she's grown out of it.

I still can't leave a roll of paper towels lying around the house. We keep them in a cabinet so they don't get shredded. But we haven't dealt with any toilet roll destruction in years.

People are going to say to make sure she has other things to play with and you need to use interactive toys to tire her out- and all that is true. But shredding tissues and toilet paper is just too tempting to a kitten. It's like putting bubble wrap in a room of people and thinking they won't be popping it.

Thank you. My vet said just to play with her more, but she’s a Siamese and so I can play with wands and laser and I even put auto toys out for her multiple times a day. She never gets tired.

 

[Mimi527]

Krista had a toilet paper shredding phase that she thankfully grew out of. But when she was shredding the rolls, I draped a hand towel over the toilet paper roll. That was enough for her to lose interest as it didn't shred.

(Pay no mind to the spare roll. This photo was for demonstration. Krista doesn’t shred paper anymore or that extra roll would definitely not be there. Or it would also be wrapped.)

Yea I put a shirt over the trash can. Then she found other methods. I’ll try that!

 

[Kflowers]

You are going to need a trash can with a more secure top. Or you could use a small tin in a drawer instead of a trash can.

You can get a small bucket and secure it half way up a wall that she can't climb. I did that with the kitchen trash and hung the bucket on cup hooks so that it would swing when someone tried to climb inside it.

 

[daftcat75]

daftcat75 that's clever and a half!

I always believe it's easier to train me than Krista. I look at what she finds so rewarding about an undesirable behavior and try to remove that reward. If that means I drape a towel over my rolls or I always put away my dishes (if I don't do them, she'll do them for me), so be it.

 

[susanm9006]

Tissues, tissue paper, toilet paper and paper towels seem to be irresistible to kittens. Most outgrow it but a few will be shredding paper through adulthood. As far as wastebaskets, there are usually lots of things in them you don’t want in kitten getting to so lidded cans are a must. I used a lidded box to hold toilet paper and kept the paper towels in the kitchen cabinet. You may choose some other way of hiding it but that is about the only thing that works.

 

[vince]

If the roll holder has a small-diameter arbor, you might give the new roll a squeeze to make it oblong and mount the roll so it feeds off the back side. The out-of balance roll will cause torque pulses as the paper is taken off that will encourage it to break at the perforations easier than if the roll was round. Feeding off the back side of the roll will generally leave nothing dangling that would be more attractive to the cat.

There actually are toilet paper holder arbors that are mounted off-center, presumably to help keep down waste in commercial service, but I've never seen them for sale, or I'd have listed them here.

Not that this eliminated 100% of the cats' toilet paper roll shredding, but it did take care of most of it.