First pet?

[arobynne]

We have a little friend scurrying around the house again. Since the traps we put out in the spring didn't catch it and we now have a little boy who spends his day crawling and exploring the house's nooks, we're thinking about another approach--we might get a cat

Comments

[rcantilles]

It took very little effort to convince Sophie not to claw on specific items of furniture. We let her go at the computer chairs, but mostly because they are pieces of crap and her claws couldn't possibly make them worse. Scratching posts and keeping claws trimmed does wonders. We have a cardboard scratcher with catnip inside of it that she concentrates most of her efforts on. Someday when Robin and I graduate from grad student furniture and have more money to throw around, I may try out softpaws. (By then, we may have moved on to a new cat... Sophie's starting to get up there in years.)

My impression is that cats are extremely easy to care for, but then again, Sophie is about the most inoffensive cat I've ever known (except for when she peed on your sandal...) She does shed a TON, which is a pain. The smell isn't much of a problem once you've worked out the right kind of litter and have a covered litterbox; dogs are definitely worse in that respect. I hate wet dog smell.

Having a cat won't guarantee that the mouse will be caught. We had a mouse infestation the first year we were in our current apartment, and Sophie didn't do a damned thing. That may have been because the mice were also eating poison from traps and she could tell... when we were still in Blacker, she brought a baby mouse into my room from outside, so clearly she is capable of mousing.