Video: How to Keep a Cat From Running Out the Door

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There are two approaches to keeping a cat from running out the door, which include creating a positive environment away from the door or using a deterrent in the doorway. Find out how to keep an indoor cat inside the house with help from a professional pet behavior consultant in this free video on cats as pets.

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Video Transcript

How to keep a cat from running out the door. This is common problem that many owners face with their cats they're interested in being outside and especially if you have an indoor only cat your trying to protect them from being hit by a car, picking up diseases, getting in fights with other cats and its really important to you that your cat doesn't escape. So there a couple ways about maintaining this safety and keeping your cat from darting out the door. One way would be to create a routine so if your cat for example tries to escape from the door when your on your way to work before you open the door in the morning, you could get some treats for your cat, take out a couple of those treats and change the routine. So normally your cat is anticipating that when you leave its a chance for them to find an opening in the door and to escape, but now you've picked up some treats and just before you open the door to leave you set those treats somewhere away from the doorway ether up in your cats dish or just further away from the doorway. This distracts them then your able to leave and your cat has a positive association with you leaving instead of looking for that opportunity to dart out the door. Now another thing you can do and I leave this as a last resort but again your thinking of safety here and rather than letting your cat escape and possibly get in to a fight with another cat, pick up diseases and have an average much lower lifespan or get hit by a car. I definitely recommend that you can use a spray bottle so when your using a spray bottle or any kind of deterrent for the cat its important that the cat doesn't think that your actually the one thats punishing them, so if you do use a spray bottle, you want to be misting it, not in a stream towards the cat and the cats probably not going to be close enough that the waters going to hit them anyway so this is just something to make the doorway seem less appealing area and one of the things that you can do is to actually hide yourself behind the door and to reach out with a spray bottle and spray it so the cat can seeing the mist but they're not seeing you and not getting that association and this is something that you could leave outside the doorway and when you come home from work if thats a time again that your cat is normally darting out the door, you can just crack the door open, reach inside, give a little bit of a spurt and then open the door and safety enter. Your not saying a word to your cat because its very important that your cat doesn't associate this with you that they think that the doorway is just an inhospitable area for them to be in and thats how you train your cat not to escape from the door.

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How to Keep a Cat From Running Out the Door

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