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TenementFunster posted:i need two cat trees, or one cat tree that can accommodate two cats. I dunno what you think is ugly, but I've bought 3 different trees from https://www.armarkat.com/ and the cats seem to love them. poo poo's expensive though, so I exclusively bought from the on sale page.
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Dec 5, 2025 15:32
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One thing to keep in mind with a cat tower is they will wear out from the cats sharpening their claws. So if "looking nice" is a priority you either need to get one where the scratch pads can be replaced or you're buying a new tower every couple years. That's the one advantage to the cheap ones on chewy, they use standardized bolts and column sizes so you can kinda lego build them as needed. Or swap in replacements.
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Dec 5, 2025 15:35
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armarkat also sells replacement parts
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Dec 5, 2025 17:02
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if the scratchers are rope wound round pillars, you can buy sisal or coconut rope for pretty cheap to replace worn-out ones - just need to nail it in top and bottom if you wind it tightly. pads yeah those would be harder to DIY replace
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Dec 6, 2025 10:37
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halokiller posted:there's that fancy grooming box I keep seeing on social media but can't tell you if it's any good because it's like $300 Oh, looks fancy! Douche4Sale posted:I knew I had seen something like a brush that attached to walls or arches before. It turns out the search term you are looking for is "self grooming" or "self groomer". Oh, that's perfect! I found a thing I'm sure he'll enjoy. Christmas is saved! Thanks!
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Dec 7, 2025 22:28
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I have a probably overpriced cat tree from Mau but the cats love it and I like looking at it, so I'd say it's worth it. It's also sturdy enough for our two, who are both fairly large cats (14 & 16lbs).
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Dec 8, 2025 00:32
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halokiller posted:there's that fancy grooming box I keep seeing on social media but can't tell you if it's any good because it's like $300 have one, two out of 5 cats use it regularly.
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Dec 8, 2025 01:58
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I have one of those artificial sunlight lamps for the winter sadnesses. I can only keep it on for a short time though, because as soon as my cat sees it, he sticks his face right up against it and squints. It hurts his eyes but he can't stop himself. Got to wonder what's going on in his head.
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Dec 8, 2025 13:26
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Warmth maybe? Feel his ears or toe beans and if they're cool to the touch kitty is just looking for some toast. Maybe consider a pet-specific heating bed, if he's the type that likes cat beds.
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Dec 8, 2025 13:51
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We've got a one year old foster kitty (Paimon) in our bathroom, and a ten year old kitty who just lives here (Inex). Paimon had her vaccines about a week ago, but Inex hasn't had her boosters in a while, both are healthy inside cats (though both are ex-colonists), both spayed. Inex has had several foster buddies throughout the years, so she's well used to strangers, even if she's kind of a dick to them at times. Now, the plan is to move Paimon into a very spacious dog cage in the living room as a next step in socializing the babies. We originally intended for Inex to get her boosters today, but we had to cancel the appointment after attempting to get her in a cage for an hour. She's a handfull. My actual question: housemate thinks we should wait with the move to the living room until we can get Inex to the vet for the boosters, but if she's been inside all this time and Paimon has an all clear on health and vaccines, is there actually anything we need to worry about? They've been breathing the same air all this time after all, and Paimon's cage will not be easily accessible.
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Dec 10, 2025 19:51
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Generally disease transmission is via contact and fluid exchange, like saliva. So sharing the same general vicinity is not risky and doesn't say much about the likelihood of future infection. But if Paimon has been tested for and negative to FIV and FeLV then it's fine. At that point the worst that will happen is they share a cat cold and that's not immunized against any way. Edit: I want to be clear too, if Paimon got a check up, and the vet look them up and down and said "yup, that's a cat" and gave the shots, then you'll probably want something firmer than that before you let the two run rampant. kw0134 fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Dec 11, 2025 |
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Dec 11, 2025 13:00
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Oh nah it's a good and professional forster org we've worked with several times before, so they check for all of that. This is just the first time we've had someone this freshly vaccinated combined with Inex being behind on her shots. Thanks for the reassurance!
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Dec 11, 2025 16:03
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Ok so my dad and I are moving in together soon for the sake of his health, and we both have three cats. The hope is that the six cats will all live along in harmony, or at least some kind of tolerance, if the home we end up renting is big enough. However we've both agreed that we can't clean seven litter boxes worth of litter a day if done the way we've been doing it (squatting next to the boxes and scooping it into trash bags). We discussed various things like stools or chairs to sit in next to the boxes, but eventually it dawned on us: Hey, why not just get some automatic litter boxes? Then we just have to empty and replace a bag once a day and the job's done. The two questions I have are: 1: How many automatic litter boxes do we need for 6 cats? I imagine I don't need the full 7 we'd normally get, but we definitely need at least three or four, right? It feels like the thing cleaning itself changes the equation but we're not sure by how much. 2: What are good brands of automatic litter boxes? My friend has one for his two cats and it's a Petkit brand. He has a few gripes about it, but most of it is tech related stuff I don't understand relating to API calls. Are there any brands that y'all highly recommend? I know to check reviews carefully because of the automatics that were killing cats earlier in the year. Thank y'all for the help. Here is a picture of one of the cats. His name is Orion and he's a little stinker who will drag entire loaves of bread off their perches and over to his food bowl before devouring them. I have had to lock all my bread up in cabinets to stop him. 
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Dec 11, 2025 18:47
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Litter Robot is the only automatic litter box I would ever trust until and unless other brands demonstrate their safety. For six cats, I would guess two robots and maybe a third box scooped manually if one just Hates the robot and refuses to use it or they're old and can't get into it easily. And a question of my own! One of our cats is allergic to salmon and over groomed a large part of her body while we were learning this. Most of the fur has regrown but she still licks a lot. She'll lick fabric and us as well. My spouse has spots on their arms that have been licked so much that they're uncomfortable to touch. Has anyone had any luck convincing a cat to ease up on who and what they choose to lick?
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Dec 11, 2025 22:00
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You might want to invest in a lick mat. It's just a little silicone mat with different grooves/textures you put wet treats on. They're technically a dog thing I think? But we fostered a nervous cat who found a lot of comfort just licking a churu out of all the little grooves in a lick mat. Just something to redirect his attention. They're cheap and you can get ones with suction cups on the bottom so they don't get scooted all around. E: when it comes to breaking/making a habit in cats, I recommend food and CONSISTENCY Rat Patrol fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Dec 11, 2025 |
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Dec 11, 2025 23:09
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I took care of my sibling's dog for a while and she loved one of those. And coincidentally we were thinking about getting a big pack of churus as holiday gifts for our girls. So I will definitely try this as soon as it's feasible.
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Dec 12, 2025 02:06
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Ohhh I'll have to look into a lick mat too. Cinnamon's been overgrooming her belly and it's looking rather pink and sore. Putting her in her Suitical helps to let it heal up(and makes her very sleepy and floppy) but as soon as she's out of it she's back at it again.
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Dec 12, 2025 11:02
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Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:Litter Robot is the only automatic litter box I would ever trust until and unless other brands demonstrate their safety. For six cats, I would guess two robots and maybe a third box scooped manually if one just Hates the robot and refuses to use it or they're old and can't get into it easily. I thought you were kinda blowing me off at first, I thought no way would two litter robots do the trick. But looking up more on Litter Robot and how the Litter Robot 5 by itself can handle 5 cats, and yeah that makes sense. I've ordered a Litter Robot 4 for my current cats and based on the trial my dad will do the same for his, and then we'll just idk put the two automatic litter boxes on different floors of a house we rent or whatever. Thank you very much for the advice.
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Dec 13, 2025 16:44
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For what it's worth, my LR 4 handles my three cats no problem so two of them would probably handle your brood just fine so long as you keep the litter level up and empty the used litter every other day. Those bags of used litter get heavy though!
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Dec 13, 2025 18:32
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Re: grooming, nothing is going to totally replace self grooming. More accurately, the hierarchy of quality is as follows: 1) Fastidious self grooming 2) Supplementary brushing because they’re a bit of a gremlin or getting old / fat. May or may not include occasional butt wiping. 3) Daily and very deliberate brushing and occasional “bathing” with wipes/towels because they’re quite incapacitated by injury/age. 4) Total self grooming replacement, including the use of towels or wipes or even bathing with a gentle handheld shower wand if a vet calls for it, due to protracted total incapacity or senility. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Dec 13, 2025 |
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Dec 13, 2025 22:58
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TTBF posted:Thank y'all for the help. Here is a picture of one of the cats. His name is Orion and he's a little stinker who will drag entire loaves of bread off their perches and over to his food bowl before devouring them. I have had to lock all my bread up in cabinets to stop him. My black ragdoll will drag bread loaves on to the counter then chew through the packaging. I have hence rediscovered bread boxes.
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Dec 13, 2025 23:03
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Potato Salad posted:My black ragdoll will drag bread loaves on to the counter then chew through the packaging. I have hence rediscovered bread boxes. Same here! I found out my two cats love bagels, when I went to make myself an egg sandwich and ALL of my bagels had tiny little bites missing. I felt like such an old lady when I got a bread box, but I mean, it works.
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Dec 14, 2025 03:22
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They always take a single small bite out of EVERY single slice or roll as well
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Dec 14, 2025 12:07
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an iksar marauder posted:They always take a single small bite out of EVERY single slice or roll as well Got to find the good roll/slice, so better sample them all.
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Dec 14, 2025 14:11
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I don't post here in this subforum regularly, so please forgive me if this is the wrong place. I've fed my various cats (RIP to the ones that are no longer with me) Core Wellness food for a long time, probably 15-18 years. I have noticed within the last year or so that the consistency of their wet food has started to become highly variable. Some batches are a more solid pate, while others are sort of loose and watery. This is the same flavor/size that I always feed them, using a recurring Amazon order. The cats have never had a problem eating it, but this issue has me really thinking that the quality control at this company has gone off or something is seriously wrong. I always saw this as a premium food (and it certainly costs a lot). Anyone know what's up with this? What are the current premium wet cat food companies? I don't think I want to keep going with Core. I don't mind paying for the good stuff, but I'm not really sure what it is these days.
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Dec 17, 2025 02:30
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belated thanks to everyone for the cat water fountain recommendations. my guys seem really like it! also i tried out a few of the RFID/microchip feeders, and really like the new PawsPik RFID feeder. one of the feeders doesn’t wanna detect the chip on my fat cat, but it was easy to stick the included RFID sensor on his collar. i just gotta hope he doesn’t pull it off when im out or he’ll be on a diet! it has also allowed me to automatically feed him 1/8th a cup four times a day instead of 1/4 cup manually twice a day. he just inhales his food anyway, and having four feedings a day is really helping his attitude in the middle of the day. the app works well, and the battery backup is nice. the wifi is 5ghz and 2.4ghz, unlike a lot of the older models, too. i wish it had the ability to record a voice memo to call the cats over at feeding time, like the PetLibre, but they got Pavlov’d by the sound of the mechanism within a week. it was kind of creepy to have my wife’s disembodied voice call out from the kitchen four times a day anyhow. my only gripe is i can’t find a way to turn off the useless/distracting LED marquee display. i know which feeder is which and neither of them read english! TenementFunster fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Dec 17, 2025 |
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Dec 17, 2025 02:51
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We got a new cat, his name is Penny, he's awesome. I've had cats all my life and I've never had a cat with this particular problem: he doesn't clean himself. He's about 5 months old, and he just doesn't do it. Occasionally he will lick his paws and wipe his face off, but that's it. Maybe sometimes he'll clean his tail? But he has this one spot on his fur that has "something" on it and he just hasn't touched it. It's been a week. And you can just tell by the way his fur looks in general that he doesn't clean himself. Any advice? He seems to be relatively unafraid of water. When we bathe our kids, he hangs out with us. He sometimes puts his front paws in the toilet. So maybe we could bathe him too? I don't know. I want goon advice. Edit: He does do SOME cleaning. He doesn't usually walk around with poop on his butt or anything. And there isn't any distress on his part, he's totally fine. Just not into licking his own fur. Sneeze Party fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Dec 17, 2025 |
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Dec 17, 2025 14:27
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First, I'd ask if he's actually stinky or otherwise giving signs of being noticeably dirty. If not, then he'll figure it out probably. If he is dirty, then not grooming might be a medical issue that's not readily apparent, or could be cat. So if a vet has cleared him for any potential health issues and it is, indeed, because he's being a contrary cat, then you can try bathing him. If he's a long hair you might need to do so anyway because long coats are generally harder to self-manage in the first place and will be totally unmanageable if he's not grooming properly at all. If he's still a kitten then now's the time to introduce him to grooming by a human before he ossifies into crusty cat who hates anything new. Warm water, no soap, and basically rinse him down and a towel dry would probably be perfectly fine as a starter and then introduce pet shampoo and a blow dry after he gets a little acclimated. With practice and familiarity it's something he can expect and won't be a cause for complete and unmanageable panic later. And there's an argument to be made that cats might need to be introduced to bathing because eventually they get old enough and can't do it or they get into accidents that necessitate a bath and then it'll be a whole thing.
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Dec 18, 2025 00:37
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There's not ACTUALLY anything that will keep a chat from chewing on the bottom branches of an artificial tree, is there? He was totally fine with it last year, barely interested. This year he's loving obsessed with it. He's chewing the branches like he's trying to brush his teeth with it. (His gums don't look too red or anything, and he's not chewing on anything else unusually.) I don't eat oranges so I don't have a fresh pile of orange peels every day to hang in there, and most of the things people suggest spraying are toxic to cats. Which I suppose is the point, it's something cats instinctively know is bad for them. I guess I could buy all the various sprays that chewy carries and give them a go one by one. Not that any of it will be here in time for this year anyway. It seems like more than a 'repelling odor' what I really want is a bitterant spray, though I don't know if cat tastebuds react to bitter the same way anyway. Or something that tastes bad but isn't toxic, rather than something that smells bad, because I doubt any odor is actually going to stop him. Though I imagine then I'd end up with a cat drooling/barfing all over the house until he figured it out which is pretty brutal. I'm pretty bummed because everybody's away for something or other this year so I'm literally alone on Christmas and I can't even put a tree up. But I guess I'd rather have an obnoxious cat to keep me company than a tree.
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Dec 21, 2025 16:10
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I mean you could get some of the spicy spray they sell to put on bird feeders to keep squirrels from hogging all the seed. It sucks to cause an animal pain but 1. It's temporary and not dangerous and 2. in my experience, cats are smarter than squirrels and will be turned off by spicy smells and not have to have a taste (my cat usually likes to puncture a few holes in all my bird seed bags juuust in case it's cat food but has never tried the bag of spicy feed)
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Dec 21, 2025 16:24
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one of my cats (the gremlin one) loves bitter apple spray and spicy chili spray
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Dec 21, 2025 21:18
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Has anyone changed to a litter zero from a litter genie? I'm seeing these ads all over social media. The litter zero bags seem cheaper than the litter genies but I'm not a fan of only being able to order them from the manufacturer.
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Dec 24, 2025 19:32
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I have a bit of an odd question. I recently bought this cat tree to put in my office so that my two cats could watch my husband and I when we work from home. They like keeping an eye on us, and they like being up high, so it was a no brainer. The issue is that the middle platform (with the hole) and the top platform (that the rope is connected to) are almost the exact same size, which makes it tricky to get to the top. My black cat is big/strong enough to just yeet herself from the floor all the way up to the little hut, but my other cat is just too small to make it consistently. He'll try to jump all the way up, and about half the time he'll latch on with his front two paws and then spook himself and jump down. My question is, is there some sort of rope ladder or something I could put on the platform with the little hut to make it easier on him to get up there? The platform is about four feet off the ground, so a ramp might be a little impractical. Edit: We live in an apartment, so drilling cat platforms into the walls won't work. The cat tree:  Both cat tax: 
Soysaucebeast fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Dec 27, 2025 |
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Dec 27, 2025 01:57
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Put another shorter cat tree next to it.
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Dec 27, 2025 05:07
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Or leave a chair next to it. If your little one is even a bit adventurous he'll eventually figure out how the tree works as-is and you might leave it alone to give him a bit of a puzzle to work it out for himself. As an alternative, you can probably modify the middle platform to be a little wider, get a bit of plywood, cover it fabric or carpet, drill a few holes through both the platform and your plywood extension, use bolts w/ nut to attach the two.
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Dec 27, 2025 22:30
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Put another shorter cat tree next to it. You joke, but I thought about it. The husband has veto'd that though, he said he's tired of making cat trees (we have one in every room at this point). kw0134 posted:Or leave a chair next to it. If your little one is even a bit adventurous he'll eventually figure out how the tree works as-is and you might leave it alone to give him a bit of a puzzle to work it out for himself. I was thinking about modifying the middle platform too. It would be easy enough to do, and the husband is pretty handy so I think he could handle it. Leaving a chair nearby isn't a bad idea in the meantime though. I think I have a spare one sitting in some closet somewhere.
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Dec 27, 2025 23:57
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you could always drill a few holes large enough to fit a sisal rope through and then make like a little rope ladder for them up to the second platform
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Dec 28, 2025 00:46
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My cat is old and can't groom himself fully anymore and no matter how much I brush him he still gets matted fur. What are some clippers sets to get? These will only be used for getting rid of the matted fur on my cat but my sister has a ragdoll and I might buy one that can accommodate her needs too. Any help would be appreciated.
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Dec 28, 2025 02:08
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Budzilla posted:My cat is old and can't groom himself fully anymore and no matter how much I brush him he still gets matted fur. What are some clippers sets to get? These will only be used for getting rid of the matted fur on my cat but my sister has a ragdoll and I might buy one that can accommodate her needs too. Any help would be appreciated. I have the "oneisall Quiet Cat Clippers for Matted & Long Hair, 2-Speed Cordless Pet Shaver Grooming Kit for Cats, Small Dogs & Animals" , it was like $25 on sale. I had a simpler model from a company called Grimgrow, "Dog Cat Home Hair Waterproof Clipper Portable Electric USB Rechargeable Pet Grooming Tools Low Noise Shaver Cordless Trimmer for Small and Large Pets", but I found it had a tendency to snag and potentially cause nicks. The oneisall is good for my medium hairs needs e: 
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Dec 28, 2025 02:29
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mawarannahr posted:I have the "oneisall Quiet Cat Clippers for Matted & Long Hair, 2-Speed Cordless Pet Shaver Grooming Kit for Cats, Small Dogs & Animals" , it was like $25 on sale. I had a simpler model from a company called Grimgrow, "Dog Cat Home Hair Waterproof Clipper Portable Electric USB Rechargeable Pet Grooming Tools Low Noise Shaver Cordless Trimmer for Small and Large Pets", but I found it had a tendency to snag and potentially cause nicks. The oneisall is good for my medium hairs needs
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Dec 28, 2025 03:41
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