The Great Outdoor-to-Indoor Cat Conversion

I am in the process of converting our cat, Izzy, from being an indoor/outdoor cat to being an exclusively indoor cat.

Teaching old dogs new tricks has nothing on this.

I won’t go into the details of why this is necessary except to offer some “key” phrases: abscess on the butt for cat fight, nasty excretions for said abscess, a three-figured vet bill, and lurking neighborhood coyotes.

Got it?

It’s time for Iz to discover the greatness of the Great Indoors.

I’m finding that the conversion requires three tools. Two brightly colored squirt guns and a laser pointer. I will return to these in a paragraph or so. First a word about catnip.

After some considerable on-line research, I added a catnip-laden fabric mouse to the conversion kit. I soon abandoned it. Well, not really. Izzy abandoned it — after about three frenzied kick-boxing bouts with the mauled mouse-like sack.

I think that Izzy has a catnip resistant gene that kicks in just when he has scored the equivalent of a TKO on a fake mouse. Iz stops, stares at the inert mouse and comes to the realization that this is no mouse at all but a useless sack full of catnip.

At that he wanders over to the front door and pointedly yearns for all that is beyond it. REAL stuff, like trees, bugs, dirt, predators.

Time for the laser pointer.

I usually start by whisking the bright red laser dot in front of Iz’s paws. He locks on to it and swipes at its nothingness. Then I run the light in a large circle just ahead of the scuttling cat. Iz is good for about a 20-second pursuit. Sometimes running the dot up the wall is good for a pounce or two. But soon he stops and decides the ‘dot situation” calls for feline analysis. What exactly is this red, flickering light? And why do I give a damn?

Sometimes I aim the dot at the cloth mouse to see whether I can reawaken Izzy’s killer instinct. Impossible. I’ve discovered — academic journals take note — that the common domestic cat is more interested in laser lights than catnip-stuffed mice. I’m certain the Department of Defense can put this information to good use fighting terrorism and the infamous “suicide cats” of Kandahar.

The tactics discussed so far come under the heading of “distractions.”

Now we come to “behavior modification.” This is where the rubber hits the road and we reach for those two colorful squirt guns — one outside the front door (It happens to be a bright green), the other outside the backdoor (It happens to be yellow and, for no particular reason, larger than the green gun).

For the past five years, Izzy routinely bolted outdoors in the morning when I brought in the newspapers. No longer. After three mornings of being squirted, the mere appearance of the brightly colored guns, without a squirt being squeezed off, sends Iz into full retreat.

Classic behavior modification. Not unlike waterboarding but kinder and gentler.

Sure, Iz still has his occasional spells of yowling to go out, but some deft moves with the laser usually put an end to it. Follow that with an extended interval of chin scratching and praise and suddenly the Great Outdoors is a distant memory.

Behavior modified, it’s time for Iz to curl up for an eight-hour nap on the couch.

Cat Diplomacy

Jacques Von Lunen, a former student of mine from PCC, has taken over the pet column in The Oregonian. Over coffee and croissant today, he shared that a whole new world is opening up to him. Covering the domestic animal kingdom is no small task. But for someone who once dreamt of being a vet, Jacques seems to have landed a dream job — at least as long at The Oregonian survives.

Part of his assignment is to contribute to the inevitable Oregonian “OregonLive” pet blog. While blogging, he’s discovered that the mere mention of the word “pit bull” is a reader magnet.

His weekly column appears in the paper on Tuesdays, and today’s topic immediately grabbed my attention. It is about getting a cat to accept new arrivals (nuisances, interlopers, intruders, mortal enemies) to its domain.

We have a cat, who now owns the house we once thought was ours. Occasionally I have wondered whether Izzy (seen above) might accept another cat. After reading Jacques' column, I’ve concluded that The Great One, who barely accepts me, would go ballistic if we tried to introduce him to a “new friend.”

But Jacques did offer some intriguing ways to try to get a well-established cat at least to consider allowing another cat — or dog, or baby — to enter its world.

As I read the advice, my mind wandered to diplomacy. I wondered whether Hillary Clinton might pick up a pointer or two from the column.

There are an awful lot of human beings out there who have trouble sharing real estate. They’ve been known to fight like, well, cats, to keep each other at bay — and, coincidentally to keep the arms industry thriving.

So take Jacques' suggestion that two strange cats initially should be placed on opposite sides of a closed door but let them eat near the door so they can hear each other munching away. That’s like putting human adversaries at opposite ends of the table. “Hey, he’s eating the same food; he can’t be all that bad. I wonder how he likes the shrimp cocktail?”

Then there’s the ploy of tying two cat toys at the ends of the same string and threading the sting under the door. The cats can both “play” with trying to pull the string away from the other without actually seeing the rival. In this scenario, the game’s the thing, not the rivalry.

Diplomats do this with agenda setting and preconditions. They never have to see each other during the give and take.

The suggestion that there be a “pheromone exchange” is a little hard to imagine. It entails rubbing a towel or sock over the cats’ faces and then putting one’s rubbed cloth in the other’s room. I suppose this is worth a try with humans. What if Shiites and Sunnis or Israelis and Palestinians took in each other’s laundry? At the very least it could lead to some serious cuts in defense spending.

The next suggestion is to open the door between the rooms but put up one of those protective, telescoping baby gates. I think the Pakistanis and the Indians have something like this along their borders. There’s a good deal of ritualized posturing, grunting and snarling, but nobody gets killed.

Finally comes the moment of truth when you put both animals in the same room. Jacques recommends keeping a squirt gun handy, just in case. With humans, squirt guns would be novel, but fire hoses, Mace or tear gas might work better.

Jacques adds that it’s also good to create an upbeat, good-times mood “with toys, treats and play.” With humans that might translate into bribes, beer and back rubs. Whatever.

Finally, he says, if none of this works “separate them again and start the process over.”

Patience is the order of the day. Think Ireland, Korea, the Holy Land, Pakistan and India.