5 Ways to Help Your Cat Love the Cat Carrier
- Location: Keep the carrier out at all times in a room where your cat enjoys sleeping and resting. This will begin the process of helping to create positive associations with the carrier or to help change previous negative memories.
- Creating positive relationships with the carrier: introduce the carrier in stages with cats who have had previous negative experiences. Start without the lid, rewarding for exploring and spending any time investigating. You can even start with the blanket out of the carrier a few feet away, making this a safe and cosy place to be. When you observe your cat settling regularly on the blanket, you can then place it in the carrier (when your cat is busy elsewhere). Once your cat is happy to relax and lie down inside the bottom part of the carrier, you can reinstate the top half when your cat is again busy somewhere else. When your cat is comfortable with this, you can replace the door and keep it open.
- Amazing place to be: make the carrier both an exciting and restful place to visit and spend time in, by making it comfortable and cosy with a variety of treats and toys to discover. Give your cat more treats for spending time there.
- Using scent: use either your cat’s pheromones if your cat enjoys being stroked, by gently rubbing a soft cloth around your cat’s face or chin and spreading this scent on the corners and rooftop of the carrier so it feels familiar and safe. Or use a product such as Feliway, which mimics this.
- Being in the carrier leads to fun: once your cat is happy to settle in the carrier, start asking her to go in and teach her that being lifted up and taken to different rooms in your home always leads to delicious treats or fun games, whichever she finds most enjoyable.
By incorporating this into your daily life, taking your cat anywhere will finally be a pleasure for both of you, or at the very least, less stressful.