Friend of mine had a tortie who bit through a string of Christmas lights, was blown against a wall several feet away, and was never 100% right after that. She also never tried it again.
Having seen Christmas Vacation, I put a GFCI breaker in for our Christmas tree when we got a cat. It turned out she mostly just boxed the low hanging ornaments.
I wish that had stopped my wife's last cat. 10 years later I am STILL finding the odd cord that sweet, fat, fluffy white ball of cat chewed on. Apparently the spicy zaps were vitalizing, cause she lived to 21.
My cats, and our current cats are trained with chilli oils or tabasco. Spicy and pungent rub on the reachable sections for a few weeks has discouraged them permanently, save the newest and smartest cat.
She waits until the residue fades, then pulls apart the water dish pump because it makes funny noises.
Also, you can get paintable, surface-mount conduit that will stick to nearly anything (walls, floors, under a desk, up the back of a cabinet, etc) that you can run cords and cables through to get where they need to go. It's a little work to get set up initially, but it removes the temptation completely, and the bonus is that you have excellent cable management that looks nicer than loose cables all over the place.
Try the Catstages pretzel. It's the only one that works for my cat. She chews them so aggressively that I have to replace them every few months. Got one in every room so I can redirect her if she starts showing sniffing at cords again.
Also tried Grannick's Bitter Apple Spray, but she actually seemed MORE interested after getting a taste. Little weirdo. 🙄
I tried that bitter apple, too, on a dog I had that likes chewing. She was rather fond of the taste, too, but did at least switch from chewing to long periods of licking. 🙄
I hope they follow your very sound advice. A friend of mine had a kitten who electrocuted itself chewing on the cord to the TV. My friend was devastated!😢
I agree. It’s not just electrocution but they could eat parts of cords and get a blockage or worse. My cats specifically like to eat soft charging cords.
I buy the fabric covered cords for all the small charging wires and she doesn’t touch those and then the plastic covers for the big wires. She likes the usb cord sized ones best.
I used this for my cat and I found that it worked great, I had to wrap any cords he could reasonable get to but luckily for me he only does it when I am watching because he is a jerk that way.
They also make sprays specifically designed for training cats to not chew or scratch on certain objects. I have one that is rosemary based and has bitters.
He has likely left a scratching-related scent around the bookcase from glands in his paws. Try an extra good hoover/carpet clean/polish to eliminate the scent markers in that area.
You could also try click training which is quickly linking desirable behaviors to treats/rewards with a click noise.
I always give praise when a scratching post is used, and firmly distract/divert attention when scratching furniture.
Looks just like my little girl...14 years old and loves the taste of every spray I've ever used to distract her. She even goes back after I've used pepper spray.
I sprayed that on the couch… Stupid licked it off & asked for more. He chewed the bottle for a bit , like the one in the picture and then proceeded to nap on the couch. That’s when I gave up & surrendered completely to my Feline Overlords.
Omg I have a pic like this somewhere too!!! None of those sprays stop my one dumdum from chewing on wires, cables, bars, and slats; they also don’t stop my other dumdum from CHOMP CHOMPING the leaves of houseplants that are “slightly toxic” to her species.
Orange peels are a popular natural deterrent used to keep cats away from furniture. However the peel, seeds, and oils contain toxic compounds like limonene and linalool. If ingested, these can cause severe gastrointestinal upset or nervous system issues.
It’s the concentrated essential oils where this poses a real problem. Wiping a few peels on furniture or wires leaves an absolute negligible amount that will not physically harm cats even if directly licked/chewed after application
Oranges are one of those “no-no” items for cats. Citrus has compounds that can cause gastrointestinal distress. Not sure if it falls into toxic but it definitely falls into “cats should not have”. Not sure if they’ll instinctively ignore it though so I might be overthinking this one.
I have used this from the start. Then I wiped hot sauce on any areas they seemed interested in experimenting with. For some reason, they were not deterred by bitter apple.
I tried this same thing. Unfortunately, that's how we figured out our cat loves hot sauce. I'm not being funny either, little turd would literally just sit there and lick the shit out of the wires after applying Tabasco, Red hot, Daves whatever on it. Once the flavor was gone he'd just start chewing again.
I buy puppy teething toys/balls in bulk for my cat to redirect him. He still chews on cords sometimes, but the ball is his favorite. His attitude definitely shifts if the ball gets lost under the couch and he can't reach it himself.
The cord protectors are helpful, but it's important that your cat can still get the stimulation that they're seeking by chewing on something. My cat just really likes that cheap rubber texture 🫠
I regularly stop my cat with a sharp inhale and "NOOOO" and redirect to another toy, but i use cat body language like making big wide eyes and jumping up when she does something dangerous while making direct eye contact so she knows I sense something dangerous. I also know cats are tonal and not so verbal so I use a really deep loud voice when I say no and kinda drag it out, similar to a growl.
She knows the baby voice means she's doing good / being praised and deep loud voice means she's doing something wrong or dangerous too now, which took a lot of reinforcing with various things.
Not sure if it works for all cats, but it does for my siamese. She's also a talker. Here's a Pic for payment since I made you read a wall of text.
Unfortunately this method fails on my cats, they thrive on being naughty 😭, they're thrill seekers or something. Luckily they dont chew cords often, I'd be doomed if they did
She still chews on plastic to annoy me. If I am asleep and she wants my attention on something, she will find the loudest crinkly plastic and jump / chew on it. It is absolutely obnoxious
Others have covered deterrents and sleeves, but another important factor is to provide an appropriate alternative that meets the need. Your cat wants to chew on something, probably something with that texture. You could try silver vine sticks or something like dehydrated beef tendons or chicken strips. Generally deterrents work best when there’s an alternative that meets what they’re trying to get out of the behavior to begin with.
Sometimes, as a last effort, providing a specific wire that they can chew on also works. One of my cats has an unplugged cat5 network cable as a toy and he generally doesn’t bother other cords now and mostly lost interest in it after a while. This does risk having them think all cords are toys though so you have to know your specific cat and other methods are better to try first.
I can’t believe I had to scroll so far for this. Our two cats have never shown any interest at all in wires. But I suspect that it because there are two of them and they are outdoor cats, so they have always been able to play with each other, go outside or use any of their numerous toys.
My kitties also used to bite my wires and sometimes I would find my wires in two pieces so I bought spiral wire protectors and wrapped all my wires with it. My wires have been safe ever since. 😌 There's no stopping the kitties, only protecting the wires.
Yes, this was my solution as well. Our two cats are wire chewers (all my previous kitties knew not to chew on wires but these two just don’t seem to learn). Only solution we have found are the spiral protectors shown in the picture above. They work perfectly.
I don't understand why that's not the default suggestion. People talking about bitterants and stuff... dude, mouth-on-fire is guaranteed to work better than that, and is completely safe and non-toxic. You can't lose. If Tobasco doesn't do it then you get a sauce that's literally 50 times hotter than that.
Pretty much summed up my experience. You can go out and buy stuff at the pet store for 3 times the price and it MAY work or just get some hot sauce and be done with it.
Yeah, it seems widely agreed upon that peppers evolved capsaicin specifically for the “How do I get mammals to stop chewing on my important bits?” Problem.
I wrapped all accessible wires in tinfoil. Then I actually tied some leftover wire to some furniture so she could chew to her heart's content. It worked, she confined her chewing to "her wires" and left the others alone.
I hide them, and I also started buying metal-cased cords (you can find them if you search for pet safe phone charger cords) that the cats can’t chew through 😂
There are cable protectors you can buy that are basically thick plastic tubing with a slit along its length you can put around your cables. If you search for “pet cable protectors” you should find some. The clear plastic ones worked for my cats, and soon they grew out of chewing on them.
This is going to sound a bit weird, but I managed to wean a cat off wires by getting her dried chicken feet from an organic pet food shop to chew on instead.
Spread a small line of dawn dish soap on a rag, place the cord over the soap, fold the rag over, and pull the cord through to coat it in soap. It’s non toxic to cats and as soon as they get a lick of the dried on soap they’ll stop.
Bitter lemon spray (intended for pets). My cat used to chew everything when I first got him. I used the spray a couple of times on areas he frequented most. He's given up the habit completely. And be careful when you're spraying because if it gets on your hands and you put them anywhere near your face you'll taste it too, learned it the hard way.
We wrapped all of ours in tubing from the hardware store. Was tedious and expensive but now we don't have to worry about the two of them eating the cords.
Now we're working on the one who eats plastic...sigh*
Secure the wires away so they're not dangling and aren't accessible.
Make sure the secured cables are in a spot that's either not easily accessible or make sure it is easily noticable by you so you can "no, but yes" them.
Play with kitty with appropriate toys to encourage proper play with approved items (for this, I suggest supervised play with cheap shoe laces or a dangly toy).
Had a cat that used to pee on our bookcase so we eventually just sprayed straight up lime juice there and also left the squeezed fruit remains. Also used a whole variety of the keep away sprays....
Nothing worked for this cat. Some are just immune/ don't give a shit
At one point I had hot sauce on them. Not recommended but it stopped my PICA kitty from eating a sixth phone cord, third laptop cord and a second Ethernet cord
sure you can start by not playing with them with string. they associate string or cables with play and chew on them. give them kick toys Maybe a feather animal on the end of a filament and wand but not just shoestring or string.
I got those wire protectors and put it in all the wires I could. They’re too hard for their teeth to cut through it enough to get to the wire. 😅 Is it pretty? Soooo not, lol, but after having to buy another Apple Watch charger after 1 week of getting it I had no choice…. 🤣
I got my cat N-bone cat chew sticks and silvervine sticks. He mainly chews those now. Went through far too many phone charging cords before we figured out chew sticks.
My cats used to do that when they were kittens. What I did to stop it was rub vinegar on the wires and they instantly stopped. The smell alone was bad enough for them to keep away but if they went to chew without sniffing first they would start gagging. Now they have no interest in wires at all.
There's lots of sprays specifically for pets chewing on stuff they ought not be chewing on... Two come to mind off the top of my head are "No Chew" and "Bitter Yuck!"
There are others, and they all seem to have different gross tasting stuff, which is great because some sprays don't have the desired effect on some pets, so it helps to find which one works for you and yours...
My cats HATE cinnamon, so spraying cinnamon oil on stuff in pinch helped when I didn't have those aforementioned sprays on hand... Good luck!
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