Advice—October 2005

Dear Sparkle,
I have a pretty nice life with a pair of humans who rescued me from a shelter a few years ago. Whenever it’s just the two of them, things are great—I get to play sometimes and get lots of nice treats. The only problem is when they have guests come over—I hate that! I really don’t care much for strangers. I mean, who knows where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing? I don’t trust them so I do the only logical thing—I hide from them. That’s okay when the guests only visit for a little while, say, a few hours, but sometimes they stick around for a couple of weeks! Do you have any idea what it’s like, having to sneak around in your own home when you need to use the litter box? It’s really no fun. So I want to know—how do I convince my humans to stop having guests over?
Signed,
Reluctant Recluse

Dear Recluse,
I am not a big fan of guests, either—they smell funny and like you said, who knows where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing? In spite of all this, I’ve found it next to impossible to make humans stop having guests over. It seems like it’s almost a compulsion! We cats have more sense—does anyone ever see us inviting another cat over to spend the evening or—horrors!—a week or two? Of course not! But humans seem to need the company of other humans on occasion. It’s one of their more unappealing traits, if you ask me.

But I have learned that guests do have their good points, if you are willing to come out from under the bed and take advantage of them. If they like cats, you can milk them for treats and playtime. Even if your humans don’t allow you to beg for food, you can usually get away with it with guests. What’s even more entertaining is if the guests don’t like cats—then you can annoy them by climbing all over them and getting in their face. The added benefit to this is that if you irritate them enough, they won’t come around anymore.

If you really can’t stand the guests and you don’t want to be friends with them, there are ways to make them not want to come back. You can crawl all over their stuff and shed lots of fur. This is especially effective if your fur is a radically different shade from the guests’ things—like, if you’re white and they wear lots of black. If they aren’t fazed by this, there are other ways of adorning their things with your fur—namely with a carefully placed hairball. That will make them not want to return. If they’re really, really persistent then it’s time to pull out the big guns and use their bags as your litter box (hey, it’s probably closer than your regular litter box is, right?). As both humans and cats know, the smell of cat urine is extremely enduring and very hard to get rid of. Those pesky guests, however, will be very easy to get rid of once you’ve tried out this tactic. And I can almost guarantee they won’t be coming back. This last trick will probably make your humans mad at you for a few days, but if you really, really hate having guests over, it’s worth the temporary inconvenience.