[stephne]

I have a cat, Ra, who is now 7 months old and he is the most naughty cat I have ever had! The other cats I had would understand not to repeat doing what they were doing when I would scold them. My scolding consists of either spraying with water, talking with a deep voice and looking them straight in the eyes or just tapping their nose and removing them from wherever they were causing trouble. Ra however, for example, if he jumps onto the sink and I scold him, he just keeps returning and returning to the sink! I even tried putting him in his cage, but he actually enjoys being in the cage... I'm out of scolding methods!! Is this typical for some teenage cats or might he actually have some problem?

[topladyj]

Well sweetie my kitty skyler does it too. He really has a nack for people food so he constantly tryes to get on my counters or stove regardless of how many times I yell at him. I think its just there age. And mine tries to get in the trash too looking for any crums he can find. I really think if we both keep telling them no then eventually they will get it. My cat is 1 1/2 years old. So no it is not a kitty mental problem... lol

[morgaine300]

Sounds normal to me. :-) Some cats can be more difficult to train than others. And every cat always seem to have that "thing" they just won't train on. Like my current cat can't seem to help biting. He definitely knows not to and has been trained not to, but I guess it's against his religion to not bite or something. So he goes through spells where he does it anyway. But he's fairly good about everything else. And a cat I lost two years ago would not stop eating plants. So sometimes there's just one thing they never train on.

They will train on most things, but some cats will take longer than others. It can even take a year or so. It's not been uncommon for me to have real problems with some issue (like getting on the counter or whatever) for quite some time, and then at some point the cat just finally stops. My current cat was difficult with the kitchen counter thing, but at some point, after he was 2 or so, he just stopped and never does it anymore.

You need to be patient, consistent and diligent, especially with a hard-to-train cat. And it helps if you reward for good behavior, like petting and "nice" voice talk. Like give him special attention when he's not on the sink. This also reinforces the good behaviors.