Kitty advice

[Biciclista]

I find it interesting that you have a dog who is hyper and you are worried about a cat being a PITA? Cats are very low maintenance in comparison to needy dogs.
If you are going to get a kitten, it will easily get used to a dog. And many adoption agencies use foster families to socialize their cats and many of those have dogs. So if you specify you want a cat who is ok with dogs you will find there are plenty that are available.
We don't have carpets and we don't have any furniture that the cats are scratching. I have a cat tree in the livingroom, a box (corrugated cardboard cat scratcher) in my office, a door hanging thingy on a door knob, and
I bought some really really cheap carpet for my cats (just a 6 foot by 2 foot piece of it) to scratch on too.
I also trim toenails, maybe not as often as i should. And i have the cat litter in the basement where I don't have to smell it every day.
oh, and if you feed high quality food, the feces don't smell so bad.

[smilingcat]

Getting a cat or kitten from a rescue group will be far better way to go. You can ask a rescue group for a dog friendly cat. The cats in our rescue group are rated for multiple cat household, children, dogs, indoor/outdoor. The foster person should answer your question regarding hyper dogs and the cat they are fostering.

Get a tall scratching post. Atleast 3 feet in height so the cat can stand up on his hind leg stretch out and reach with front legs to scratch. Also having several cheap corrugated cardboard scratching post works wonder.

Litterbox clean every day! We also put some Litterbox treatment from Nature's Miracle to deal with the smell.

And what most everyone else said. We don't like cats to go outside. They get hit by a car, pick up FeLV/FIV when they get bit, come home all chewed up after a cat fight, rabies, coyote, barn owl...

[badger]

I went the other way, had cats all my life and got a dog later.

If the cat is from the shelter (and I SO encourage you to!) they are going to be grateful to be out of the shelter environment to begin with, and because your home will be completely new, s/he should adjust to a dog. That being said, I would slowly introduce the cat to the dog, maybe keep them separated in a room but can smell each other for at least a couple of days.

I think all our cats had some sort of scratching issue, but those are usually remedied by what others have said: scratching posts, or putting double-sided tape on sides of the furniture.

And there always seems to be at least one poor kitty at the shelter who'd been declawed. Declawed kitties need homes, too.

If there's going to be outdoor access, I've found that for the most part females don't tend to wander as far and wide as males do.

And (sorry this is getting so long!) most shelters these days do some sort of personality assessment of the cats. Just look for a cat that's boldly lounging in the middle of all the action - if they're mellow in a shelter setting, they can only be mellow at home!

[Norse]

Ditto what others said about training cats to use a scratching post. Some other thoughts/tricks:

- If they do scratch where they should not, put strips of scotch tape in that spot, they don't like that and won't scratch there again;

- When you catch them in the wrong spot, gently carry them over to the designated scratching post/spot and simulate with their two front legs the act of scratching;

- Keep front nails trimmed!

On the litter, our days of smelly litter ended years ago when we switched to bedding "litter" like that used for gerbils, rabbits.... Currently, we are using aspen shavings which absorb better than the pine or cedar. It is also much nicer not having to step on the little stray litter pebbles that make their way around the house.

[Norse]

Oh yeah, 1+ on what Mimi said about high quality food. We switched our two cats to a raw food food (chicken) diet about 3 months ago and really, their feces hardly smell at all.

[Irulan]

Consider keeping it 100% indoors. The statistic on cat death through cars and other encounters is very high. The hunting they do, while instinctual, is fairly devastating to the bird population. And lets not forget that roaming cats generally make the neighbors unhappy by pooping in their flower beds and going after the birds they are watching.

The solution I like is the fully enclosed outdoor kitty runs: they can be out and observe, but not roam and kill. It's humane and keeps them safe yet interacting with the outdoors.

confession: I am a bird watcher who is really sick of my neighbors cats lurking under the nests in my yard, and encountering cat poop in my gardens. If my pets hung out in your yard and I never cleaned up after them, how would you feel?

[Norse]

After too many close calls with prior cats and since we have 3 bird feeders out back and do not want to invite them to their deaths, our cats are indoor cats even though they like to go outside. The way we solved this is to buy them harnesses and attach them to long ropes or cables to let them go out. We only do this when we are in the backyard with them (wouldn't want them going after birds or chipmunks or being attacked and unable to get away). They seem quite content with this arrangement.