I know of many people who are resigned to their cats jumping up on their tables and kitchen counters but we’re not those people. We’ve tried putting aluminum foil on those surfaces, sticky tape and vigilance to use a squirt bottle. All to know avail. What are we suppose to do? Scat Mat maybe?
So, I ordered a 30×16 scat mat from Safe Pet Products and we’re in process of seeing if it works. It came neatly rolled up in a box with a booklet of instructions. It’s all but obvious what you have to do to use it. Unroll it, grab a 9v battery and install it in the control unit, attached the control unit to the mat and turn the unit on. The only reason I read the directions was to understand how the on/off/setting switched worked – very simple.
Of course using the mat effectively is what we need to do and there’s no guidance for this other than trial and error. My house, my cats and my wife and I are unique and we need to solve our problems. We can easily learn from others but this appears to be a simple task with need for some means to determine success.
We have put the mat on a kitchen counter at night and the kitchen table and island during the day. My wife joked we may need more mats to cover all the areas on the kitchen we want the cats to learn to stay away from. Time will tell as we investigate how well this one mat works.
This is a close up of the mat and you can see the conductive rings embedded in the mat. When pussy touches these the controller senses a connection and gives a brief jolt. When set to low, the jolt is truely low level.
What is success?
Beyond keeping our cats off the counters and tables in the kitchen which is obvious is how do we know that the cats are staying off? One answer is to put things on these surfaces that if moved indicate the cats have been there. Another is to put up a video camera and record activity in the kitchen for later review. Perhaps there are others ways.
We’ve opted for the camera technique because I have what I need to do this. I’ll post the results later after I have them.
To be continued.