Cat Friendly Venues?

[sfokevin]

A number of recent local posts have spurred me on to the idea of taking up the hobby of training my cat to travel and go out into public.

Presently Sua Noi our not so noi house cat has been content to lounge about the house. Anytime we take him out in the car he howls fearfully as he immediately connects this with either going to the vet and being poked or going to the cat motel where he had a very bad experience with a K-Nine at their swimming pool...

My goal is to train & socialize him to go out into public with us without fear with the end goal of doing our annual 20 hour road trip to Koh Samui for the farm burning season with a calm and relaxed cat...

I was thinking of starting with trips to parks, waterfalls and someone mentioned local restaurant/cafes that allow cats!?

My questions are:

Where to find a suitable harness and travel pack that is NOT pink?

(I don't think I will try training him to ride on the motorcy commando/Thai style this year)

Are there any pet parks here in Chiang Mai where people take their animals to socialize?

Where are some good places that allow cats in public... Cafes would be nice or lunch venues?

[krisb]

Seriously?

[NancyL]

When we take our cats out in public they're in their little plastic baskets and they aren't happy campers when in transit. They're making the trip to go to the vet or maybe to visit a friend in a nearby condo.

I think you have to start when they're really young. Really, really young. Just saw a cute video of a kitten that was adopted by a husky dog and her litter of pups. As the kitten grew, they trained it to walk in a harness just like the puppies. Video and photos here: http://lovemeow.com/2015/06/husky-dog-mothers-rescue-kitten/

[uksomchai]

get a dog would be my suggestion my friend. Not many cats will accept being in a harness unless they have been introduced to it from being very young

[Patsycat]

Good luck!!

[JLT]

Extraordinarily poor idea (unless of course, you want to stress out your cat completely).

How do you think you're going to train an adult cat, do you have experience? I suspect (if your cat is anything like mine), it will be completely indifferent to anything you say, more than likely ignoring you altogether.

Why would you (or anyone else) think it's a good idea to take a cat out of its environment, shove it in a small box then take it by car (which we already know it hates), to a restaurant and then put it (in its box) on a chair where it can be terrified by all the other noises. As for your 20 hour car journey why not ask your vet if there's a sedative available which might help the cat settle down?

It seems to me that you're not really thinking of your cat, you're thinking of ways to make life easier for yourselves.

[NancyL]

Extraordinarily poor idea (unless of course, you want to stress out your cat completely).

How do you think you're going to train an adult cat, do you have experience? I suspect (if your cat is anything like mine), it will be completely indifferent to anything you say, more than likely ignoring you altogether.

Why would you (or anyone else) think it's a good idea to take a cat out of its environment, shove it in a small box then take it by car (which we already know it hates), to a restaurant and then put it (in its box) on a chair where it can be terrified by all the other noises. As for your 20 hour car journey why not ask your vet if there's a sedative available which might help the cat settle down?

It seems to me that you're not really thinking of your cat, you're thinking of ways to make life easier for yourselves.

Adult cats are very difficult to "train". We had one who L-O-V-E-D to be handled, always jumping in anyone's lap when we had visitors. No fear of strangers. I had the bright idea of taking her to a nursing home for visits as a therapy cat. She was declawed and gentle and (to their credit), their activities director checked out me and the cat with our vet, etc.

At the nursing home, I found she didn't want to get out of her basket and was very skittish about the concept of a group a strange people sitting in a large room. Eventually, I realized she did warm up to one person sitting in a small room, but not large groups. So, I took her around from room-to-room. Also, she really preferred being petted by men and not women and there were mostly women in the home. After a few months, I had to stop the visits because they wanted me to bring her in the afternoons and she was a "morning cat". She had no interest in being social during her afternoon nap time and the nursing home didn't want us coming in the morning when they were trying to do other routines with the residents.

The entire experience taught me that "training" an adult cat is a slow, gradual process and you're doing it for your benefit, not for the enjoyment of the cat. The cat never acted excited and happy when she saw me getting the basket out ahead of a trip. (like a dog would) Quite the opposite.

If you watch the videos on the link I provided in my previous post, you'll see the only reason that kitten wants to go outside is because she's having fun with the dogs -- and she started young.

Edited August 4, 2015 by NancyL

[arunsakda]

When we take our cats out in public they're in their little plastic baskets and they aren't happy campers when in transit. They're making the trip to go to the vet or maybe to visit a friend in a nearby condo.

I think you have to start when they're really young. Really, really young. Just saw a cute video of a kitten that was adopted by a husky dog and her litter of pups. As the kitten grew, they trained it to walk in a harness just like the puppies. Video and photos here: http://lovemeow.com/2015/06/husky-dog-mothers-rescue-kitten/

Kitten and Huskies.jpg

Amazing. I was raised with pets and we had one little orphan cat who arrived the same time as German Shepard puppies and the same thing happned！Nuzzling on the dogs abdomen, and growing up thinking it was a dog. Following me around on walks, and being accepted as a dog . The thing used to sleep ON them when his feet were cold. Any other cat would have been chased away!