Good cop Bad cop is a time-honored method for getting cooperation out of someone. Works with kids, works even better with cats. With the cat, the “bad cop” needn’t even be sentient. I have a tape-festooned chair that Miss Cloud is certain is the Meanest Creature in the Galaxy. Why, it thwarts her every attempt to scratch it, most unpleasantly, and doesn’t even seem to notice her discomfiture!
I have a chair that she has decided is the Best. Scratching. Surface. EVER. The problem is that I don’t want that chair shredded. It’s one of my good ones. I tried putting something called “Sticky Paws” on it, to no avail. That’s basically wide double-faced tape, and the theory is that they won’t like the feel of the adhesive on their paws. Problem is, one of my cats figured out how to hook one end with a claw and strip it off, and another how to scratch without touching with her pads. The stuff was useless.
But I am at least as stubborn as my cats, so I tried a variant. I got regular package tape (much cheaper, as well) and stuck it to the chair in spiral loops, kind of like the way you twist crepe paper streamers. Catching an end only tangles the stuff on the offender’s paws; likewise scratching with just the claws, because it’s loose. And each time putty-tat tries to move to a different area of chair, I put more tape on it. That vicious chair grabs her paw, and then when she tries to use the other paw to brace and pull away, it grabs that paw too! How manifestly unfair! To make matters worse, Mommy doesn’t even help her disengage, because she’s sitting there laughing. Laughing! It’s cruel and unusual punishment, abuse of dignity and an offense against the Kitty Constitution. Bad chair. Mean nasty cruel rotten vicious chair! You can just see her trying to figure out how to report that chair to the Kitty Legal Defense Fund.
At the same time, every time she jumps up on that chair, I call her to “come”. She’s learned that command thoroughly, although of course in her walnut sized brain, “Cloud, come!” translates to “treat time!” She comes at a gallop, as do the other two cats. That gets her off the chair, and by the time she’s had her treat her kitty attention span has been exceeded, and she forgets to jump back up. Good Mommy! Wonderful Mommy! Mommy assuages the offended dignity with treats and pettings. Cloud doesn’t need to bother with that mean old chair; she has better things to do, like purr in Mommy’s lap. So runs the feline “logic”.
When my son was very small, I played the same game, putting his toys in time out if they couldn’t play nicely and then doing something fun with him. My friend Lee refers to cats as “kids you don’t have to send to college”. The longer I have both, the more I see the truth in that.