A Dozen Key Points on How to Enrich Your Cat's Indoor Environment
How can you ensure that your cat lives a happy, enriched indoor life? By implementing the following steps! Physical health is not the only important aspect of taking good care of your cat; mental well-being is just as essential to providing your cat with a long, rich, fulfilling life.
Indoor cats do not have the same opportunities as outdoor cats do to express their natural instinctive behaviours and experience the same sensory stimuli: hunting, lying hidden underneath the boughs of a tree, listening to the sounds of nature, scratching tree trunks, perching atop branches, marking and defending territory, mating, and so forth.
The main goal of environmental enrichment is to provide indoor cats with surrogate activities and sistuations that serve as enjoyable outlets for their natural behaviours. As cat owners we derive endless pleasure from the relationships we enjoy with out felines. In return it is our duty to ensure that our kitties also benefit from their domestic lifestyles, not just vice versa. And not just in regard to physical well-being (of which there are many benefits for cats). Despite the fact that their worlds are limited to single households, there are still a plethora of ways with which indoor cats may be kept active, engaged, and mentally stimulated.
► Rotate the toys that are available to your cat every week, keeping most of them in an inaccessible cupboard.
- Cats become quickly bored with toys once they are no longer novel, so by rotating toys so that they only see each individual toy once every four to five weeks, the toys become like new again and again!
► Many cats love indulging in catnip toys.
- Many catnip toys lose their ‘nip after a period of time, so the best ones are refillable catnip toys.
- You can also ‘marinate’ regular cat toys in jars or containers of catnip and then give them to your cat for his or her enjoyment!
- It is also possible to grow your own catnip plants, and it is not difficult to do. You simply harvest some of the catnip periodically, dry it out, crumble it, place it into a container, and stuff it into refillable catnip toys.
► Spend five to ten minutes gently grooming your cat every day.
- Cats often mutually groom one another, and it is an important bonding behaviour.
- Start by gently brushing under your cat’s chin, then its cheeks, and then move to the rest of the body. This will be a relaxing experience for both you and your cat, and will also help decrease the amount of hair that will be shed around the home.
► Place self groomers around the most feline frequented corners of your home – cats love these, and will rub up against them more times over the course of a day than you can count!
► Training your cat
- Cats can easily learn a variety of tricks such as ‘sit,’ ‘shake paw,’ ‘come’ and many others, and it provides them with excellent mental stimulation to learn these tricks.
- Your cat will also benefit from the added social interaction time with you, along with the positive rewards and attention lavished on them for properly responding to commands.
- Use only positive reinforcement to teach your cat the desired behaviours, never ever punish your cat with physical or verbal negative interactions.
► Have cat trees available in more than one room of your house.
- Cats enjoy having perches of varying height
- Felines are naturally a semi-arboreal species, so providing ‘cat trees’ is truly providing them with what they would naturally enjoy doing outdoors
- Cats revel in being able to sit and observe situations, and feel that they are at a safe height
- Having multiple cat trees with high perches is particularly important in a multiple cat household – cats will get along much better with one another when they have the readily available option to withdraw from the company of their fellow housemates
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Dr. Koharik Arman “Dr. Ko” - Licensed Veterinarian
Dr. Ko is a cat lover! Although she is trained in all areas of veterinary medicine, she has sought out a professional career that allows her to work exclusively with felines.
While in school, Dr. Ko was a Deans Honor List Student throughout the four years of her undergraduate BSc (Bachelor of Science in Biology) degree at the University of New Brunswick, and the four years during which she completed her DVM (Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine) degree at the Atlantic Veterinary College in beautiful Prince Edward Island. Dr. Ko earned many scholarships in the course of her post-graduate education, including the Bayer Companion Animal Veterinary Medicine Award. She also published an article she wrote while still a student in a medical journal, the CVJ (Canadian Veterinary Journal), in 2007.
A licensed veterinarian who works exclusively with cats, Dr. Ko is a member of the AAFP (American Association of Feline Practicioners), the CVMA (Canadian Veterinary Medical Assocation), VIN (the Veterinary Information Network), and is also a certified NEW (Nuclear Energy Worker).
Dr. Ko continues to split her time between working in private practice at two different feline veterinary clinics, as well as writing and publishing articles on animal wellness and welfare, and, of course, dedicating herself to the continued development and expansion of the www.catdoctorko.com website and its community of cat lovers.
Dr. Ko is a passionate believer in the importance of preventative medicine and educating cat owners about its benefits for their cats. It was this ideal which was the motivation for the creation of the Dr. Ko website. She continues to be an advocate for the humane treatment of all animals, and of course, the health and wellness of cats everywhere!
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