A mega-positive, hilarious story about training cats and their owners (11 photos)

Cats are independent and proud creatures, and dictating your will to them is like battling the elements. Writer Elena Mikhalkova shared a touching story about her restless cat, Matvey, which may help answer the burning question: are cats suggestible? We'll give away the spoiler right away – it turns out they are! But finding leverage can be incredibly difficult.







I have a cat. The cat weighs ten kilograms.

There's a bed. The bed has a high, soft headboard, 10-15 centimeters wide.

And there are cat owners who sleep on this bed.

At night, the cat jumps onto the headboard and walks around. The cat is having a nocturnal promenade. But since the cat was a cow in a past life and has carried some of its characteristics into its current incarnation, on its fourth or fifth walk, it loses its balance and falls to the ground.

If I'm lucky, the cat falls next to me. If I'm unlucky, the cat's ten kilograms land on my head, and for some reason, always on its butt.





Question: How can I break my cat of this habit?

We've tried:

— sticky tape placed on the headboard. (We ended up spending half the night ripping them off the distraught cat, nearly scalping him.)

— the scent of ylang-ylang, which the cat disliked. (The cat didn't care that it was his favorite scent.)

— large quantities of tangerine peels. (The cat disgustedly knocked the furs onto my head, falling over himself in the process.)

What else can I do? I was already asleep with the sprinkler under my pillow. The cat runs away, then comes back.

A photo of the cat is attached to illustrate the scale of the problem.



I love simple and easy-to-implement ideas. So, suggestions to nail a shelf to the bed, to the cat, and to my head so he could comfortably fall on it were put off until later.

First, I took six balloons from my child, inflated them, and sandwiched them between the wall and the bed. They turned out beautifully. My husband and I admired them and went to bed.



In the middle of the night, a gunshot rang out. Half asleep, I decided my husband had shot the cat (even though the only weapon in our house was a water pistol). When the light came on, the cat was sitting on the floor, surrounded by the remains of a blue balloon, squinting discontentedly. We gave him a kick, moved the balloons, and went back to sleep. This was our strategic mistake, proving how little we know about cats.

He blew up the second and third balloons about twenty minutes later and hopped away, laughing mockingly. My husband insistently asked me to clean up and finish my experiments for the day. While I was hiding the balloons in the closet, the cat crept up to the largest one and swatted it with his paw.

The net result: minus four balloons, minus two hours of sleep, minus eight meters of nerve fibers for two adults. Plus entertainment for the cat.



Then the backup plan came into play. The entire headboard was lined with several layers of foil to make the rustling sound louder. I assured my husband that he could now sleep peacefully: the cat would definitely not touch the foil—he'd be afraid.

Well, that's almost exactly what happened. The cat came a couple of hours later, after we'd fallen asleep. He jumped from the closet onto the foil. The foil rustled, and the cat got terrified, flew into the air, and landed on my husband.

So, the bottom line: minus ten meters of foil, minus forty drops of motherwort for two adults. Plus entertainment for the cat.



That's how he looked at us this morning while we tried to make breakfast with shaking hands.

So, I had a problem that I brought to the community.

After the foil and balloons didn't work, I started thinking about something else: how to keep the cat out of the bedroom at night.



The first thing I used was a cat repellent. Unfortunately, the cat didn't realize it was a repellent. But my husband did, wincing, sniffing, and finally asking to air out the room. So now I have a husband repellent; I can give it to anyone who needs it.

The basin of water turned out to be just as stupid. We placed it there with the idea that the cat would splash around and forget about the bed (he loves water).

The plan was half-justified: the cat splashed around, but he didn't forget about the bed. That night, he hopped up to us, shaking his wet paws. In my sleep, I thought he had twenty-two of them. He stepped on my face with ten, and ran the rest over the blanket and sheets. Finally, he kissed my husband on the nose, pressing his dripping wet muzzle against it.



After that, my husband said, to hell with the interior, he'd settle for a shelf.

He brought a varnished board with a side rail that evening, fiddled with it for two hours, cursing the innocent bed, and finally got it installed. I wanted to say that it would be better for the cat to fall on us than for this thing (no one would get out alive from under it). But I looked at my husband's face and decided to remain silent. Okay, I thought, we'll sleep for one night—and then I'll take it down, just to be on the safe side.

Besides, before bed, the child came running and threw his toys all over it. I gave up and didn't scold him, because I was wondering which relative would raise the child if we were buried under the shelf.

(I must say, my worries were unfounded: as it turns out, my husband had nailed it down securely.)

That night, the cat came onto the shelf. He strolled leisurely to the middle of the shelf and touched one of the toys with his paw. It turned out to be an interactive hamster, a "Buzz Pets."

The touch of the cat's paw turned the hamster on. He cried out invitingly, "Abusu ... And if he happens to see a hamster through a slightly open door, he puffs up to the size of a Pallas's cat and retreats in terror.



Here he is, our hero and savior.