12 ms·

Coping with Cats

142 points by luu 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Sulamitachica 6y ago
Thanks for sharing! Being a cat owner sure is hard - but so worth it when they snuggle up next to ya!
powersnail 6y ago
My experience of coping with cats: - Place the litter box in an accessible place - Scoop frequently - Set up routines with the cat - Plenty of toys, and sometimes play YouTube for cat - At least one thing that can be climbed
- coldpie 6y ago
  > Plenty of toys, and sometimes play YouTube for cat Since I started WFH, one of my cats has taken to sitting on my desk and batting at my mouse cursor. Never had a cat do that before.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    When my cat is on my desk, I pick her up and put her on my lap. (Getting paid to work while a cat is on your lap? Sweeeeeet.) Of course, she doesn't stay. She climbs back onto the desk. So I put her on my lap again. After about three times, she either stays (yay!) or climbs down onto the floor (bummer, but at least I can work).
- r00fus 6y ago
  Yes, climbing is key - cats love vertical play and hang out. Routines are also very key. My cat is like a clock now. Never tried YT for more than 1m with cat - does that even work? Also how often do you refresh the litter box?
  - powersnail 6y ago
    My cat can watch squirrel videos for half an hour. I find it works well when the tablet is vertical, not flat on the ground. He play with the progress bar as well (probably not intentional, but he did manage to fastforward until the squirrel came back in the screen again). Every time I go through a unit (20 lbs) of cat litter, I dump the litter, clean and bleach the box, and rinse the hell out of it. Then, I place new litter. I'd say, approximately once ever 1.5 months.
r00fus 6y ago
Regarding the litter and smell - being a relatively new cat owner I did a lot of reading and I came to 2 conclusions (note: I only have one cat, and she's < 1 yo): 1) Litter needs scooping every day. Otherwise cat will rightfully be upset and do poop in the wrong place just to let you know. Recommended to have N+1 litters for the N cats, but small apartment = difficult to place/clean all of them. 2) According to many cat books (notably Jackson Galaxy) litters are a prime scent-soaker and major signpost that lets cat mark their territory. So venting them outside may cause other confidence issues. Could the smell issue be resolved by simply scooping regularly?
- stevewodil 6y ago
  I don't really understand smell complaints with litter. I have a cat that has VERY stinky poops and the litter box is in my bedroom (it's in a closet area that I removed the door from). If he poops then I remove it immediately. Otherwise I collect any urine deposits at night before I go to bed. Obviously the poop itself smells but I've never had a problem with litter smell and don't understand what people are doing wrong. Surely they just aren't cleaning the litter box enough.
  - munificent 6y ago
    People vary widely in their sensitivity to particular smells. My kids made a "compost jar" for a school project a few years ago. They took some soil, a bunch of rotting food waste, and earthworms and put it all in a jar. At some point, the jar was accidentally got left too close to a window and the worms got crisped and died. It took several days for us to notice. I threw that rotting dark concoction out in the garden. Unbeknownst to me, the dog got out and—like dogs do—decided to gulp that whole pungent witch's brew down. It became very beknownst to me about ten minutes later when she threw the whole thing up on the brand new rug. We're talking a large puddle of hot garbage, rotting earthworms, dogfood, and bile. It was vile. The smell was heart-stopping. I have never cleaned up a mess so fast in my life. Even so, cat poop is worse for me. It will make me gag instantly. Something about the fishy meatiness of it turns my stomach.
- fizzled 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
grawprog 6y ago
It's an alright list, but that's some beginner level stuff. Where's things like -cat is obssessed with plastic bags whenever he wants attention and ends up wearing them like a cape trailing it through the house causing havoc. -cat likes to knock over your breakable things just cause it likes to see them smash -wake up at 2 in the morning to some weird noises only to find the cat spiderman-ing up the screen on the window because some rats or something were outside -on the note of two in the morning, that's of course the cats favourite time to run around the house meowing on the top of his lungs, just because. -if you have a cat and get a puppy, get ready for that puppy to start walking on window sills, the back of the couch, and even up on the coffee table even if it's over 50lbs and clumsy as hell, cause the cat does it. -Oh, you were 5 minutes late feeding the cat, well have fun with non stop fucking around for the rest of the day or night -made some steak, fish, chicken, even salad...and turned your back for a second, well that cat's gonna be all up in that, as a bonus, maybe he'll knock it onto the ground so him and the dogs can feast. But despite all this...and more, still love the furry little bastard.
- beervirus 6y ago
  An automatic feeder is worth having. It seems to decouple the food from the owner in the cat's mind, so that if they're hungry, they go sit by the feeder instead of complaining to you.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    I feed my cats at a random time between 7am and 10am (between 7 and 7:30 during the work week, between 8 and 10 on the weekend). They never bother me in the morning on the weekend, and on the rare occasion they do they usually want to play. I think the randomness has helped, especially the extreme variability of the weekend.
    - vharuck 6y ago
      I have my cat trained to expect a phone alarm for breakfast time. Total accident at first. It was my wake-up alarm, but I started always walking up before it, and then it was the "owner's awake and over here" signal. Any meowing before it gets a strong tone at first and a spritz if continued. Now that I'm working from home, I'll also start using an alarm for dinner. I had tried to teach her to read an analog clock by putting it near her food dish. No change in behavior except she kept knocking it over. My previous cat was like yours, though. She didn't expect meals at usual times on weekends. We can train them somewhat, but they do have unique personalities.
happytoexplain 6y ago
I sympathize with the Litter Robot experience. It's painfully close to being perfect if you can invest in its price and physical size. Relatively speaking, it works far better than perhaps any other complex automated mechanical consumer product I've ever used, but that's a low bar. It gets stuck mid-cycle randomly, so you have to remember to give it a look a couple times a day, and you still may not catch it before your cat decides to take matters into their own hands. Because this is the only major problem, I was highly motivated to try every suggestion out there in fixing it, but nothing worked. It's truly a shame.
dmart 6y ago
I appreciated the recommendations, but from a tech perspective related most with this sentence in the opening paragraph: "when I tried to research mitigations for any of these it was 100% SEO listicles". I've found this to be true as well. Searching for impressions/reviews on literally any type of product is impossible now - the entire first page of results are just spammy sites either regurgitating PR for a specific product or paraphrasing Amazon reviews. In order to get real human opinions on anything, you have to suffix your search with "reddit". All of these sites are clearly bogus and should be banned. How did search become so broken?
- beervirus 6y ago
  Google still makes money on them and has no incentive to crack down.
- encom 6y ago
  >you have to suffix your search with "reddit". Still, exercise scepticism. Reddit is heavily astroturfed.
- powersnail 6y ago
  I've found that it's not just for product review. For any generic life topics (pet, plumbing, etc.), web searching is not an effective choice anymore. It's a mixture of PR, useless home remedies, and a small number of helpful information. I either do site:reddit.com, or some other more specific forum/website that I already know. Another option is to search YouTube, and only choose the videos in which I see the video maker actually perform the plumbing, or get along with a cat.
- underwater 6y ago
  I don't think the type of content you're looking for even exists any more. Even if someone has the desire to create a high quality, old-school, interest-based site, they're going to be dealing with the fact that Google won't surface the content because SEO magic, there is no community of similar sites who will link to them, and their content doesn't fit the format preferred by social media. I think the web has firmly shifted to being about commercial entities having a way of plugging content into Google. The initial premise, a web of carefully curated links between long-lived documents, is dead. And the people who would have created websites if they grew up in the 90s and early 2000s have moved onto other formats.
gnulinux 6y ago
I'm a cat owner and never had a problem with smell. No one coming into my house mentioned anything about smell. I circulate air in my house every day and clean the litterbox ever day. I'm not sure why cats would cause any smell. And to add to this: yes I think cat ownership is very worth it. It's basically an on-demand pleasure source that you can use as long as you want, whenever you want. Just curl up into the soft kitty and feel him purring, awesome!
- interrupt_ 6y ago
  > I circulate air in my house every day Might be hard to do that in really cold weather. I live in a place that's very warm and the windows are always open, so I can't relate.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    Two box fans + windows (ie, apartment) or a whole house fan in a larger house can circulate air quickly in 15m. I find useful to do that even in winter (maybe not in North Dakota winter).
  - colanderman 6y ago
    Energy recovery ventilators make this possible. There are even inexpensive window-mounted units.
- stbtrax 6y ago
  I've been to a few friends places where I've smelled it. I would never tell them.
  - gnulinux 6y ago
    What's the smell, is it urine or poo, or the smell of litter? I would guess yeah it'd probably smell a little like the litter, but I can't see why it'd smell like urine or poo, I can't even smell it when smell the litterbox itself. Maybe depends on which kind of litter you use, mine definitely masks smell. I use Arm&Hammer litter.
beervirus 6y ago
Sucks that she had problems with the Litter Robot. I love mine, and it's only malfunctioned once in the last several years. And for the fur, just get a Roomba.
- dqv 6y ago
  How frequently do you clean yours? Not empty the litter or change the tray, but actually clean the inside?
  - beervirus 6y ago
    Not at all often. Once every year or two? For whatever it's worth, I have one of the older models.
- kendodndndod 6y ago
  I thought the same thing when I was reading the article. Although I have read about many people having trouble with their littler robot, that’s not something I have experienced frequently. I have the 3rd generation litter robot, and it has malfunctioned exactly twice in three years. I empty it once a week, and my cats love it.
RankingMember 6y ago
Something about the tone of this article rubs me the wrong way and makes the owner appear to see his cats as being solely for his own pleasure rather than for the mutual pleasure of being companions in each others' lives. One example: > [The furminator] was absolutely amazing at removing fur from the cats (on areas broad and unbony enough to support the comb), and they liked it, but it left them less soft. I did not get these cats to have them at less than their maximum softness.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  The Furminator is for long-haired cats, and is not the only brush/comb you should have. I use it to remove excess fur, then I use a soft wire brush to groom and distribute skin oil. The Maine Coons love the Furminator, the Siamese don't like it and don't need it.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    If you like maximum softness, then Maine Coons are the way to go! Mine are so soft I can't stop patting them.
    - dsr_ 6y ago
      The belly fur is the best.
- kingosticks 6y ago
  Was it not just a bit of a joke? I enjoyed it and it made my partner laugh (I think that's a first for a HN post). And we didn't know about those grooming gloves, they look great.
  - uoaei 6y ago
    I've lived with folks who would unironically say "I bought you so you would love me!!!" while pinning the cat down to pet it, while the cat was under obvious duress. There is definitely a non-negligible fraction of pet owners who do not empathize whatsoever with their pets, treating them instead as playthings for their own amusement.
jakear 6y ago
I’ve always had my cats as outdoor/indoor animals, with no litterbox at all (Except when they’re very young). Never noticed any problems with smell, as cats are naturally clean animals and do a good job of simply finding a place to use the bathroom outside. I joke that indoor cats are like children (with all the maintenance that entails..), whereas outdoor cats are like delinquent friends that randomly show up to eat your food and crash on your couch. Both have their pros and cons!
- r00fus 6y ago
  How do you deal with things like fleas? We have nearby squirrels and a small yard and are sure the fleas we dealt with were brought in by outdoor lounging from our cat.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    The monthly flea and tick goo that you put between their shoulders. I'd be more concerned about cars and coyotes. ISTR the half-life of an outdoor cat is about 2 years.
    - r00fus 6y ago
      I would be careful about using that stated outdoor-only (ie, feral) cat lifespan for an indoor/outdoor cat, though the dangers are real. Ours is currently mostly indoor only (until we get all the cat-toxic plants in our yard removed) but we have neighbors and friends with indoor/outdoor cats that are definitely older than 10 years. Mitigate them with reflective collars and nextdoor or other neighborhood alert system to know when coyotes are around. An indoor only cat never really grows up psychologically, you're always its ever-present mommy. I'm not sure I want that for my kitten.
- munificent 6y ago
  Unfortunately, outdoor cats are devastating to local wildlife. https://daily.jstor.org/environmental-danger-outdoor-cats/ https://daily.jstor.org/environmental-danger-outdoor-cats/
fizzled 6y ago
Can't believe Folex carpet cleaner / stain remover isn't in there. Works great for dog or cat vomit on cloth surfaces.
cameronh90 6y ago
Regarding smell, consider trying a raw meat diet. I use Purrform (UK) but there are similar in other countries. I was a sceptic, but since converting to raw meat diet, there is almost no poop smell except when I feed too many treats. Living in a small London flat, this has been a game changer. Obviously there are risks with raw meat diets and they aren't the cheapest. Do your research, understand the potential issues, choose a quality vendor, make sure you keep up to date with parasite treatment. All that being said, my cat seems to enjoy the food more than any other high quality food I've tried, and is as fit and healthy as he's ever been.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  That's called a BARF diet: BARF – Biologically Appropriate Raw Food https://www.zooplus.co.uk/magazine/cat/cat-nutrition/barf-cat-food https://www.zooplus.co.uk/magazine/cat/cat-nutrition/barf-ca... >What is BARF? >The term 'BARF' describes so-called 'biologically appropriate raw food'. This feeding method is appropriate for the key reason that cats are carnivorous by nature. Raw food gives them just that – lots of fresh meat. In contrast to cooking your own cat food, BARF portions are given out raw and are not cooked or seared beforehand. However, this has also led to criticism of raw food, which is mostly unhealthy for humans and can lead to stomach upsets and intolerances. Does the same not also apply for cats?
hyko 6y ago
Wish I’d been able to mitigate the content on this page whilst fully embracing the joy that visiting the URL brought me.
sdflhasjd 6y ago
Of all the problems I've had owning a cat, the location of the litterbox has been the biggest difficulty for me - without the space of a dedicated small closet, it seems to be unsolvable
- mcguire 6y ago
  Ours ended up in my library. (Yeah, I have too many books.) Then my partner decided to get non-dust-free litter for a while.
- novok 6y ago
  A project I've had in the back of my mind is to make a little outdoor contained porch area for it. That way it always gets vented. It would be a bit of an expensive project although.
IncRnd 6y ago
You can always teach your cat to poop in a toilet. This doesn't take much effort to teach them. Remember to leave the toilet seat cover up for them.
- r00fus 6y ago
  Please don't do this [1]. Also washing your cats regularly is inadvisable as well unless they have some medical issue (obesity, etc). In short, they're not humans, if you treat them like one you may get unwanted results. [1] https://www.thedodo.com/should-cat-use-toilet-2079157362.html https://www.thedodo.com/should-cat-use-toilet-2079157362.htm...
  - IncRnd 6y ago
    Why not? Because an Internet article said it might, possibly be a bad idea? I never said cats were human. I don't wash my cat. We don't shower together. What makes you think I wrote any of that? None of the items listed in that article have happened in my experience to an actual real-world cat that I have seen. The article is full of suppositions. There are no actual facts listed. The first thing that I noticed in that article were all the pictures of toilet paper that cats had ripped off of the toilet roll. All one has to do is turn the roll in the other direction, and cats no longer do that. But, the writer seemed less interested in information than in filling words for a story.
    - coryrc 6y ago
      Cat parasites are not removed by sewage systems and hurt fish. Do not flush. https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/19/flush-cat-poop-dont-do-it/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/19/flush-cat-poop-dont-d... https://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/dnrp/solid-waste/ecoconsumer/documents/SeattleTimes_2015-04-04.ashx?la=en https://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/dnrp/solid-waste/ec... http://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-and-disposal/where-does-it-go#/item/cat-poop http://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-an... https://keepingitpawsome.com/never-flush-cat-poop/ https://keepingitpawsome.com/never-flush-cat-poop/
mcguire 6y ago
"I did not get these cats to have them at less than their maximum softness." Excellent tip: always know what a win looks like.
lostmsu 6y ago
I have the previous generation of the litter robot for 6+ years now, and the only problem I ever had with it is that on uneven surface it might be tricky to readjust the sensor, which you have to do once in a few months. Apart from that all my dealing with cat poop is once per week: 1) pull the robot tray, 2) replace the bag, 3) run a cycle ones to ensure sensor works properly.
- gwern 6y ago
  Yes, I have the previous generation too (the one that looks like a globe mounted on top of a donut), and 'getting stuck' is something that has not happened in 6 years of ownership. The only issue I have had with it is that the weight sensor gradually drifted and became miscalibrated, so my cat no longer triggered the timer when stepping on it; it turned out the pressure sensor is adjusted by a washer on a screw, and it had come a little too lose (=too heavy requirement).
Waterluvian 6y ago
One trick changed my life: Get two large tupperware containers. One that fits the litter box. Other for food and water. Cut a hole in them, cat sized, about two inches above the bottom so there’s a lip. I found a jigsaw worked best. You can then stack these and move them freely and put stuff on them. But they do a glorious job containing litter and food that wants to follow the cats out.
munificent 6y ago
The Dryer Turns out dryers are reasonably good at removing cat hair if you wait long enough. Remember to clean the lint trap frequently. Brilliant idea. How long should I leave the cat in?
wizzard 6y ago
Some great thoughts here, but I just wanted to clarify that Chewy.com does warn you via email several days before autoships happen. (I've been using autoship for close to a year now.)
notmars 6y ago
I don’t know much about LitterRobor, but I must say, as an expert in cats (yup, don’t ask), that if you have the money and the room (best place is in the laundry room or next to your washing machine): CatGenie is the way to go...(https://www.catgenie.com/ https://www.catgenie.com/) I’m not affiliated or involved in any way, it’s just an amazing product, from what looks like a great company, that has not-as-good SEO skills and (I would guess) is enjoying success enough that they dont need to be so agressive. In any case, it’s a cat-owning disruptive item if you make it work for your cat: as any robot litter, it takes some training. I litteraly don’t change the litter ever. I add more of their recycled washable granules once a year and, around every 4 months, one box of the product that washes them. It wasn’t talked in any of the threads, so I couldn’t resist sharing. Maybe our household and cats are an exception and lots of other people had a lot of problem with it. Or maybe people just don’t know how amazing this thing is :-) I’m rooting for the latter. In our home, it clearly succeed in wiping what the article start with as the big ticket item: the smell. For the rest of the blog post, I do believe there’s solution but they all depends on the cat :-) We have more problem with the air of our small dog, than with our persian-hairy cat...(and thanks robot vacuum cleaners!)
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  Doesn't this have the same problem as City Kitty where toxoplasma gondii infiltrates water supplies since treatment plants cannot neutralize it? This particular virus is known to be harmful to marine life and other mammals.
  - notmars 6y ago
    You can plug the ‘waste water outlet’ where you see fit. We use our washer’s, which in our city, is the waste water system, thats goes into the waste water recycling plant which doesnt mix with the ‘clean water’ cycle. In any case, it is WAY more filtering that if we were using classical litter granule that would be then send to a landfill where those same bacterias and viruses would fest and infiltrate the soil. It is an interesting debate to have though. It probably depends how your waste water is processed.
- tacLog 6y ago
deschutes 6y ago
The authority on coping with cats: https://youtu.be/mHXBL6bzAR4 https://youtu.be/mHXBL6bzAR4
WhompingWindows 6y ago
We never have any problems with waste smell for our cat. Dr. Elsey's litter and a scooping out each morning is all it takes for us. We use a litter genie, this is key because it air-tightly stores the nuggets, which a regular garbage bin won't do. There's really no smell unless the little bugger leaves his nuggets without ANY sort of burial. Even then, it's a mild smell, I mask up, no problemo.
totetsu 6y ago
This whole article of cat products really drives home for me how wide a gap there is between classes..
29athrowaway 6y ago
Other interesting products: - Self-grooming arch - Cat scent remover - Scratching post - Nail covers
winrid 6y ago
One thing that helped my allergies a lot was getting a robot vacuum that cleans up the hair a few times a week. I'm definitely not taking the time to vacuum the whole place three times a week so it's awesome (bobsweep pethair vision) Also, I noticed that I get used to a new cat after about 6-12 months which is pretty interesting.
gfaure 6y ago
Two data points: our cat's poop doesn't smell bad at all when she's eaten homemade food, while if we feed her canned food or dry food, it smells stereotypically bad. Also, cats don't necessarily knock things over just because they don't have access to the outdoors. Our indoor cat is very careful and has never knocked anything over intentionally in her life.
BTCOG 6y ago
Why did this at all belong on HackerNews?

Coping with Cats

142 points by luu 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Sulamitachica 6y ago

Thanks for sharing! Being a cat owner sure is hard - but so worth it when they snuggle up next to ya!

powersnail 6y ago

My experience of coping with cats: - Place the litter box in an accessible place - Scoop frequently - Set up routines with the cat - Plenty of toys, and sometimes play YouTube for cat - At least one thing that can be climbed

coldpie 6y ago
> Plenty of toys, and sometimes play YouTube for cat Since I started WFH, one of my cats has taken to sitting on my desk and batting at my mouse cursor. Never had a cat do that before.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  When my cat is on my desk, I pick her up and put her on my lap. (Getting paid to work while a cat is on your lap? Sweeeeeet.) Of course, she doesn't stay. She climbs back onto the desk. So I put her on my lap again. After about three times, she either stays (yay!) or climbs down onto the floor (bummer, but at least I can work).
r00fus 6y ago
Yes, climbing is key - cats love vertical play and hang out. Routines are also very key. My cat is like a clock now. Never tried YT for more than 1m with cat - does that even work? Also how often do you refresh the litter box?
- powersnail 6y ago
  My cat can watch squirrel videos for half an hour. I find it works well when the tablet is vertical, not flat on the ground. He play with the progress bar as well (probably not intentional, but he did manage to fastforward until the squirrel came back in the screen again). Every time I go through a unit (20 lbs) of cat litter, I dump the litter, clean and bleach the box, and rinse the hell out of it. Then, I place new litter. I'd say, approximately once ever 1.5 months.

r00fus 6y ago

Regarding the litter and smell - being a relatively new cat owner I did a lot of reading and I came to 2 conclusions (note: I only have one cat, and she's < 1 yo): 1) Litter needs scooping every day. Otherwise cat will rightfully be upset and do poop in the wrong place just to let you know. Recommended to have N+1 litters for the N cats, but small apartment = difficult to place/clean all of them. 2) According to many cat books (notably Jackson Galaxy) litters are a prime scent-soaker and major signpost that lets cat mark their territory. So venting them outside may cause other confidence issues. Could the smell issue be resolved by simply scooping regularly?

stevewodil 6y ago
I don't really understand smell complaints with litter. I have a cat that has VERY stinky poops and the litter box is in my bedroom (it's in a closet area that I removed the door from). If he poops then I remove it immediately. Otherwise I collect any urine deposits at night before I go to bed. Obviously the poop itself smells but I've never had a problem with litter smell and don't understand what people are doing wrong. Surely they just aren't cleaning the litter box enough.
- munificent 6y ago
  People vary widely in their sensitivity to particular smells. My kids made a "compost jar" for a school project a few years ago. They took some soil, a bunch of rotting food waste, and earthworms and put it all in a jar. At some point, the jar was accidentally got left too close to a window and the worms got crisped and died. It took several days for us to notice. I threw that rotting dark concoction out in the garden. Unbeknownst to me, the dog got out and—like dogs do—decided to gulp that whole pungent witch's brew down. It became very beknownst to me about ten minutes later when she threw the whole thing up on the brand new rug. We're talking a large puddle of hot garbage, rotting earthworms, dogfood, and bile. It was vile. The smell was heart-stopping. I have never cleaned up a mess so fast in my life. Even so, cat poop is worse for me. It will make me gag instantly. Something about the fishy meatiness of it turns my stomach.
fizzled 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

grawprog 6y ago

It's an alright list, but that's some beginner level stuff. Where's things like -cat is obssessed with plastic bags whenever he wants attention and ends up wearing them like a cape trailing it through the house causing havoc. -cat likes to knock over your breakable things just cause it likes to see them smash -wake up at 2 in the morning to some weird noises only to find the cat spiderman-ing up the screen on the window because some rats or something were outside -on the note of two in the morning, that's of course the cats favourite time to run around the house meowing on the top of his lungs, just because. -if you have a cat and get a puppy, get ready for that puppy to start walking on window sills, the back of the couch, and even up on the coffee table even if it's over 50lbs and clumsy as hell, cause the cat does it. -Oh, you were 5 minutes late feeding the cat, well have fun with non stop fucking around for the rest of the day or night -made some steak, fish, chicken, even salad...and turned your back for a second, well that cat's gonna be all up in that, as a bonus, maybe he'll knock it onto the ground so him and the dogs can feast. But despite all this...and more, still love the furry little bastard.

beervirus 6y ago
An automatic feeder is worth having. It seems to decouple the food from the owner in the cat's mind, so that if they're hungry, they go sit by the feeder instead of complaining to you.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  I feed my cats at a random time between 7am and 10am (between 7 and 7:30 during the work week, between 8 and 10 on the weekend). They never bother me in the morning on the weekend, and on the rare occasion they do they usually want to play. I think the randomness has helped, especially the extreme variability of the weekend.
  - vharuck 6y ago
    I have my cat trained to expect a phone alarm for breakfast time. Total accident at first. It was my wake-up alarm, but I started always walking up before it, and then it was the "owner's awake and over here" signal. Any meowing before it gets a strong tone at first and a spritz if continued. Now that I'm working from home, I'll also start using an alarm for dinner. I had tried to teach her to read an analog clock by putting it near her food dish. No change in behavior except she kept knocking it over. My previous cat was like yours, though. She didn't expect meals at usual times on weekends. We can train them somewhat, but they do have unique personalities.

happytoexplain 6y ago

I sympathize with the Litter Robot experience. It's painfully close to being perfect if you can invest in its price and physical size. Relatively speaking, it works far better than perhaps any other complex automated mechanical consumer product I've ever used, but that's a low bar. It gets stuck mid-cycle randomly, so you have to remember to give it a look a couple times a day, and you still may not catch it before your cat decides to take matters into their own hands. Because this is the only major problem, I was highly motivated to try every suggestion out there in fixing it, but nothing worked. It's truly a shame.

dmart 6y ago

I appreciated the recommendations, but from a tech perspective related most with this sentence in the opening paragraph: "when I tried to research mitigations for any of these it was 100% SEO listicles". I've found this to be true as well. Searching for impressions/reviews on literally any type of product is impossible now - the entire first page of results are just spammy sites either regurgitating PR for a specific product or paraphrasing Amazon reviews. In order to get real human opinions on anything, you have to suffix your search with "reddit". All of these sites are clearly bogus and should be banned. How did search become so broken?

beervirus 6y ago
Google still makes money on them and has no incentive to crack down.
encom 6y ago
>you have to suffix your search with "reddit". Still, exercise scepticism. Reddit is heavily astroturfed.
powersnail 6y ago
I've found that it's not just for product review. For any generic life topics (pet, plumbing, etc.), web searching is not an effective choice anymore. It's a mixture of PR, useless home remedies, and a small number of helpful information. I either do site:reddit.com, or some other more specific forum/website that I already know. Another option is to search YouTube, and only choose the videos in which I see the video maker actually perform the plumbing, or get along with a cat.
underwater 6y ago
I don't think the type of content you're looking for even exists any more. Even if someone has the desire to create a high quality, old-school, interest-based site, they're going to be dealing with the fact that Google won't surface the content because SEO magic, there is no community of similar sites who will link to them, and their content doesn't fit the format preferred by social media. I think the web has firmly shifted to being about commercial entities having a way of plugging content into Google. The initial premise, a web of carefully curated links between long-lived documents, is dead. And the people who would have created websites if they grew up in the 90s and early 2000s have moved onto other formats.

gnulinux 6y ago

I'm a cat owner and never had a problem with smell. No one coming into my house mentioned anything about smell. I circulate air in my house every day and clean the litterbox ever day. I'm not sure why cats would cause any smell. And to add to this: yes I think cat ownership is very worth it. It's basically an on-demand pleasure source that you can use as long as you want, whenever you want. Just curl up into the soft kitty and feel him purring, awesome!

interrupt_ 6y ago
> I circulate air in my house every day Might be hard to do that in really cold weather. I live in a place that's very warm and the windows are always open, so I can't relate.
- r00fus 6y ago
  Two box fans + windows (ie, apartment) or a whole house fan in a larger house can circulate air quickly in 15m. I find useful to do that even in winter (maybe not in North Dakota winter).
- colanderman 6y ago
  Energy recovery ventilators make this possible. There are even inexpensive window-mounted units.
stbtrax 6y ago
I've been to a few friends places where I've smelled it. I would never tell them.
- gnulinux 6y ago
  What's the smell, is it urine or poo, or the smell of litter? I would guess yeah it'd probably smell a little like the litter, but I can't see why it'd smell like urine or poo, I can't even smell it when smell the litterbox itself. Maybe depends on which kind of litter you use, mine definitely masks smell. I use Arm&Hammer litter.

beervirus 6y ago

Sucks that she had problems with the Litter Robot. I love mine, and it's only malfunctioned once in the last several years. And for the fur, just get a Roomba.

dqv 6y ago
How frequently do you clean yours? Not empty the litter or change the tray, but actually clean the inside?
- beervirus 6y ago
  Not at all often. Once every year or two? For whatever it's worth, I have one of the older models.
kendodndndod 6y ago
I thought the same thing when I was reading the article. Although I have read about many people having trouble with their littler robot, that’s not something I have experienced frequently. I have the 3rd generation litter robot, and it has malfunctioned exactly twice in three years. I empty it once a week, and my cats love it.

RankingMember 6y ago

Something about the tone of this article rubs me the wrong way and makes the owner appear to see his cats as being solely for his own pleasure rather than for the mutual pleasure of being companions in each others' lives. One example: > [The furminator] was absolutely amazing at removing fur from the cats (on areas broad and unbony enough to support the comb), and they liked it, but it left them less soft. I did not get these cats to have them at less than their maximum softness.

dsr_ 6y ago
The Furminator is for long-haired cats, and is not the only brush/comb you should have. I use it to remove excess fur, then I use a soft wire brush to groom and distribute skin oil. The Maine Coons love the Furminator, the Siamese don't like it and don't need it.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  If you like maximum softness, then Maine Coons are the way to go! Mine are so soft I can't stop patting them.
  - dsr_ 6y ago
    The belly fur is the best.
kingosticks 6y ago
Was it not just a bit of a joke? I enjoyed it and it made my partner laugh (I think that's a first for a HN post). And we didn't know about those grooming gloves, they look great.
- uoaei 6y ago
  I've lived with folks who would unironically say "I bought you so you would love me!!!" while pinning the cat down to pet it, while the cat was under obvious duress. There is definitely a non-negligible fraction of pet owners who do not empathize whatsoever with their pets, treating them instead as playthings for their own amusement.

jakear 6y ago

I’ve always had my cats as outdoor/indoor animals, with no litterbox at all (Except when they’re very young). Never noticed any problems with smell, as cats are naturally clean animals and do a good job of simply finding a place to use the bathroom outside. I joke that indoor cats are like children (with all the maintenance that entails..), whereas outdoor cats are like delinquent friends that randomly show up to eat your food and crash on your couch. Both have their pros and cons!

r00fus 6y ago
How do you deal with things like fleas? We have nearby squirrels and a small yard and are sure the fleas we dealt with were brought in by outdoor lounging from our cat.
- mcguire 6y ago
  The monthly flea and tick goo that you put between their shoulders. I'd be more concerned about cars and coyotes. ISTR the half-life of an outdoor cat is about 2 years.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    I would be careful about using that stated outdoor-only (ie, feral) cat lifespan for an indoor/outdoor cat, though the dangers are real. Ours is currently mostly indoor only (until we get all the cat-toxic plants in our yard removed) but we have neighbors and friends with indoor/outdoor cats that are definitely older than 10 years. Mitigate them with reflective collars and nextdoor or other neighborhood alert system to know when coyotes are around. An indoor only cat never really grows up psychologically, you're always its ever-present mommy. I'm not sure I want that for my kitten.
munificent 6y ago
Unfortunately, outdoor cats are devastating to local wildlife. https://daily.jstor.org/environmental-danger-outdoor-cats/ https://daily.jstor.org/environmental-danger-outdoor-cats/

fizzled 6y ago

Can't believe Folex carpet cleaner / stain remover isn't in there. Works great for dog or cat vomit on cloth surfaces.

cameronh90 6y ago

Regarding smell, consider trying a raw meat diet. I use Purrform (UK) but there are similar in other countries. I was a sceptic, but since converting to raw meat diet, there is almost no poop smell except when I feed too many treats. Living in a small London flat, this has been a game changer. Obviously there are risks with raw meat diets and they aren't the cheapest. Do your research, understand the potential issues, choose a quality vendor, make sure you keep up to date with parasite treatment. All that being said, my cat seems to enjoy the food more than any other high quality food I've tried, and is as fit and healthy as he's ever been.

DonHopkins 6y ago
That's called a BARF diet: BARF – Biologically Appropriate Raw Food https://www.zooplus.co.uk/magazine/cat/cat-nutrition/barf-cat-food https://www.zooplus.co.uk/magazine/cat/cat-nutrition/barf-ca... >What is BARF? >The term 'BARF' describes so-called 'biologically appropriate raw food'. This feeding method is appropriate for the key reason that cats are carnivorous by nature. Raw food gives them just that – lots of fresh meat. In contrast to cooking your own cat food, BARF portions are given out raw and are not cooked or seared beforehand. However, this has also led to criticism of raw food, which is mostly unhealthy for humans and can lead to stomach upsets and intolerances. Does the same not also apply for cats?

hyko 6y ago

Wish I’d been able to mitigate the content on this page whilst fully embracing the joy that visiting the URL brought me.

sdflhasjd 6y ago

Of all the problems I've had owning a cat, the location of the litterbox has been the biggest difficulty for me - without the space of a dedicated small closet, it seems to be unsolvable

mcguire 6y ago
Ours ended up in my library. (Yeah, I have too many books.) Then my partner decided to get non-dust-free litter for a while.
novok 6y ago
A project I've had in the back of my mind is to make a little outdoor contained porch area for it. That way it always gets vented. It would be a bit of an expensive project although.

IncRnd 6y ago

You can always teach your cat to poop in a toilet. This doesn't take much effort to teach them. Remember to leave the toilet seat cover up for them.

r00fus 6y ago
Please don't do this [1]. Also washing your cats regularly is inadvisable as well unless they have some medical issue (obesity, etc). In short, they're not humans, if you treat them like one you may get unwanted results. [1] https://www.thedodo.com/should-cat-use-toilet-2079157362.html https://www.thedodo.com/should-cat-use-toilet-2079157362.htm...
- IncRnd 6y ago
  Why not? Because an Internet article said it might, possibly be a bad idea? I never said cats were human. I don't wash my cat. We don't shower together. What makes you think I wrote any of that? None of the items listed in that article have happened in my experience to an actual real-world cat that I have seen. The article is full of suppositions. There are no actual facts listed. The first thing that I noticed in that article were all the pictures of toilet paper that cats had ripped off of the toilet roll. All one has to do is turn the roll in the other direction, and cats no longer do that. But, the writer seemed less interested in information than in filling words for a story.
  - coryrc 6y ago
    Cat parasites are not removed by sewage systems and hurt fish. Do not flush. https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/19/flush-cat-poop-dont-do-it/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/19/flush-cat-poop-dont-d... https://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/dnrp/solid-waste/ecoconsumer/documents/SeattleTimes_2015-04-04.ashx?la=en https://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/dnrp/solid-waste/ec... http://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-and-disposal/where-does-it-go#/item/cat-poop http://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-an... https://keepingitpawsome.com/never-flush-cat-poop/ https://keepingitpawsome.com/never-flush-cat-poop/

mcguire 6y ago

"I did not get these cats to have them at less than their maximum softness." Excellent tip: always know what a win looks like.

lostmsu 6y ago

I have the previous generation of the litter robot for 6+ years now, and the only problem I ever had with it is that on uneven surface it might be tricky to readjust the sensor, which you have to do once in a few months. Apart from that all my dealing with cat poop is once per week: 1) pull the robot tray, 2) replace the bag, 3) run a cycle ones to ensure sensor works properly.

gwern 6y ago
Yes, I have the previous generation too (the one that looks like a globe mounted on top of a donut), and 'getting stuck' is something that has not happened in 6 years of ownership. The only issue I have had with it is that the weight sensor gradually drifted and became miscalibrated, so my cat no longer triggered the timer when stepping on it; it turned out the pressure sensor is adjusted by a washer on a screw, and it had come a little too lose (=too heavy requirement).

Waterluvian 6y ago

One trick changed my life: Get two large tupperware containers. One that fits the litter box. Other for food and water. Cut a hole in them, cat sized, about two inches above the bottom so there’s a lip. I found a jigsaw worked best. You can then stack these and move them freely and put stuff on them. But they do a glorious job containing litter and food that wants to follow the cats out.

munificent 6y ago

The Dryer Turns out dryers are reasonably good at removing cat hair if you wait long enough. Remember to clean the lint trap frequently. Brilliant idea. How long should I leave the cat in?

wizzard 6y ago

Some great thoughts here, but I just wanted to clarify that Chewy.com does warn you via email several days before autoships happen. (I've been using autoship for close to a year now.)

notmars 6y ago

I don’t know much about LitterRobor, but I must say, as an expert in cats (yup, don’t ask), that if you have the money and the room (best place is in the laundry room or next to your washing machine): CatGenie is the way to go...(https://www.catgenie.com/ https://www.catgenie.com/) I’m not affiliated or involved in any way, it’s just an amazing product, from what looks like a great company, that has not-as-good SEO skills and (I would guess) is enjoying success enough that they dont need to be so agressive. In any case, it’s a cat-owning disruptive item if you make it work for your cat: as any robot litter, it takes some training. I litteraly don’t change the litter ever. I add more of their recycled washable granules once a year and, around every 4 months, one box of the product that washes them. It wasn’t talked in any of the threads, so I couldn’t resist sharing. Maybe our household and cats are an exception and lots of other people had a lot of problem with it. Or maybe people just don’t know how amazing this thing is :-) I’m rooting for the latter. In our home, it clearly succeed in wiping what the article start with as the big ticket item: the smell. For the rest of the blog post, I do believe there’s solution but they all depends on the cat :-) We have more problem with the air of our small dog, than with our persian-hairy cat...(and thanks robot vacuum cleaners!)

birdyrooster 6y ago
Doesn't this have the same problem as City Kitty where toxoplasma gondii infiltrates water supplies since treatment plants cannot neutralize it? This particular virus is known to be harmful to marine life and other mammals.
- notmars 6y ago
  You can plug the ‘waste water outlet’ where you see fit. We use our washer’s, which in our city, is the waste water system, thats goes into the waste water recycling plant which doesnt mix with the ‘clean water’ cycle. In any case, it is WAY more filtering that if we were using classical litter granule that would be then send to a landfill where those same bacterias and viruses would fest and infiltrate the soil. It is an interesting debate to have though. It probably depends how your waste water is processed.
tacLog 6y ago

deschutes 6y ago

The authority on coping with cats: https://youtu.be/mHXBL6bzAR4 https://youtu.be/mHXBL6bzAR4

WhompingWindows 6y ago

We never have any problems with waste smell for our cat. Dr. Elsey's litter and a scooping out each morning is all it takes for us. We use a litter genie, this is key because it air-tightly stores the nuggets, which a regular garbage bin won't do. There's really no smell unless the little bugger leaves his nuggets without ANY sort of burial. Even then, it's a mild smell, I mask up, no problemo.

totetsu 6y ago

This whole article of cat products really drives home for me how wide a gap there is between classes..

29athrowaway 6y ago

Other interesting products: - Self-grooming arch - Cat scent remover - Scratching post - Nail covers

winrid 6y ago

One thing that helped my allergies a lot was getting a robot vacuum that cleans up the hair a few times a week. I'm definitely not taking the time to vacuum the whole place three times a week so it's awesome (bobsweep pethair vision) Also, I noticed that I get used to a new cat after about 6-12 months which is pretty interesting.

gfaure 6y ago

Two data points: our cat's poop doesn't smell bad at all when she's eaten homemade food, while if we feed her canned food or dry food, it smells stereotypically bad. Also, cats don't necessarily knock things over just because they don't have access to the outdoors. Our indoor cat is very careful and has never knocked anything over intentionally in her life.

BTCOG 6y ago

Why did this at all belong on HackerNews?