Well, the short answer is: because it’s fun.
more cat pictures
Unlike delicate breakables, which make a loud warning noise when they expire, there’s no negative side, for the cat, from the wholesale destruction of paper products. It’s just soft, yielding, prey feedback. Disemboweling a roll of paper towels gives the cat the satisfaction of prey dispatching without a lot of loud noises. Except, of course, from us.
It’s quite annoying to enter the bathroom and find a cardboard roll of dangling shreds instead of toilet paper. We can’t keep the bathroom door closed if we have the litter box in there. Even if we don’t, a continuously closed bathroom door keeps humidity high and prevents us from airing out this room.
So while keeping the door closed can help save the toilet paper, and putting the paper towels away at night will keep us from finding a snowstorm in the morning, we also need strategies that will pay off in the long term, and help us train the kitten or cat to leave such things alone.
Remember, energy can only be redirected. So make sure your paper product cat gets lots of soft, yielding, furry alternatives that are more fun than the trapped products, and the cat will happily make the switch.
Want to know why the cat is always on the newspaper or book we are trying to read? This post explains why they do that.
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There’s more to raising and training a cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See my CAT TRAINING TIPS.
I gave kitten Kill Kill a full roll of her own to play with, hoping that she’d lay off the roll in the bathroom. Afterwards the condo looked like a ticker-tape parade had tramped through it for a few days, but it worked! She had her fill and she stopped.
My other cat never cared for toilet paper, so this was one successful experiment with a subject field of one. Other cats might think that their own roll means “When you’re done, rip and tear as much as you like!” But for us, it worked.
Hey pet lovers! This will solve the toilet paper problem forever!!
Check it out HiddenToiletPaper.com!