cat and bird in the house...help

[raleej337]

We have our conure for almost 3 months now. He got a lot of outside the cage time and free to roam the house. Since my daughter have been asking for a cat, my wife surprised her with an adopted kitten from a shelter and my daughter fell in love with her. Now my problem is how am I going to handle the situation having a cat and a bird. I am afraid that the cat would hurt our bird or make our bird very uncomfortable eveninside his cage.

To those bird owners who are also a cat slave I need your help, explain to me how we can have a harmonious life together. By the way the cat is actually still a kitten, age is between 2-3 months old and spayed.

Thank you!

 

[paulhanlon]

Personally I'm not a cat person but we do own 5 dogs and what we tend to do with our Senegal is give her the freedom of the living room also in a few weeks I will be bringing home my baby blue fronted amazon and she will have the freedom of my bedroom only thing I can think of doing is give your conure the freedom of the biggest room in your home and keep the cat in a differant room

 

[friedsoup]

As a kitten is still learning how to be a cat anything that moves is prey so never let the bird and kitten in the same room alone even if one is in a cage. That being said there is hope animals learn what is yours by its smell ( why do you think when your cat is mad at you he poos in your shoe?) so you need to get your smell on your bird. How to do this? well you can try alot of ways holding your bird close and letting it rub on you or letting him snuggle (don't freak) with your workout shirt before laundry,and always show difference to your bird he comes first i.e. if both are on the couch shoo the cat off he always should know that the bird is top of the family. there are many others here who will weigh in but I hope this helps.

 

[Alisana]

Be careful with what toys you give the cat. Don't give them toys that squeak (this is designed to simulate the sound of a screaming small animal - morbid, I know) and avoid things with feathers.

If the cat gets can saliva on your bird or scratches it, get it to a vet straight away!! Even if you can't see any injury, something small can be fatal.

Have supervised play at all times and let the cat know it is not allowed to touch the bird.

 

[raleej337]

To play safe, I think the best strategy is to shut the cat away when the bird is going out of the cage for free play. No squeky and feathered toys for the cat. This is a nightmare! Lol

I have no problem with our dog since the bird do loveto preen the dogs hair and the dog doesn't mind it at all, sometimes the bird even chase the dog around.

Thank you for the insights and if anybody else who have experience having a cat and bird in one roof, I welcome your suggestions.

 

[paulhanlon]

I wish you the best of luck with resolving this issue its not the easyest thing in the world having a cat and a bird under one roof but I have seen a good few stories about parrots and cats being the best of friends whether you want to take a chance at that I dont know but I'm sure you will figure something out and again I wish you the best of luck

 

[antoinette]

I agree with raleej337 I think the best strategy is to shut the cat away when the bird is out.
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/raleej337.htmlThere have been many many tragic accidents occurring, even when the bird and cat had been playing together for years, even under strict supervision.
Rather be safe than sorry

 

[paulhanlon]

I agree with raleej337 I think the best strategy is to shut the cat away when the bird is out.
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/raleej337.htmlThere have been many many tragic accidents occurring, even when the bird and cat had been playing together for years, even under strict supervision.
Rather be safe than sorry

I wouldn't disagree with you there I think its better to be safe than sorry

 

[lizardsmells]

I have 3 cats (used to have 5 but we've lost two to illness and old age in the past year) and I can tell you that cats can absolutely tell between 'pack' and 'prey'. Dogs can too.

HOWEVER!! They have to be taught and they have to be taught by CONSTANT VIGILANCE. You can never, ever ever leave kitty and bird out alone together. In fact, while I would let them observe one another in the same room as frequently as possible, I probably wouldn't even let them out in the same room even with supervision until the cat was much older, at least 5 years, and a bit more mellow.

My cats (and dogs) have all been bitten by Kazi, but he's a bit larger than a conure and was able to sufficiently deliver the message that he was not to be messed with ever. So now they all run from him and he delights in chasing them around and saying "kitty meow meow! meow kitty meow!"

Even still I keep a very close eye on everyone at all times. You can never be too careful.

I'll also tell you this story about a cat overcoming their natural prey drive when it counts - We have a snake and for a while, when he was very small, we were breeding pinkies to feed him. We had one breeding pair of mice in a rodent habitat. One morning (or night, who knows?) they got out. When I woke up I found all 5 cats sitting in a circle and gently herding the mice to keep them contained. As soon as we were up and had seen what was going on, the cats wandered off for their breakfast, seemingly satisfied that we'd take care of them now. Not a scratch on either mouse, yet these are the cats that would regularly bring us snakes, lizards and chipmunks that wandered into the garage.

 

[Alisana]

Our cat is skitterish at the best of times and whenever I have my budgies out, they're near me - so she doesn't dare come near them. It's never really been a big concern for us. I still ensure to only take them out if the cat is outside/down the far end of the house - just habit really.

 

[DebsFlock]

We have three cats and three birds. The cats are all older, and each has gone through a phase when we first got them of being alarmingly fascinated by the birds... although at the same time somewhat frightened of them. Over time they have learned to be mostly bored.

Our approach is that we don't have the birds out of cage unless they are closely supervised, but we don't lock the cats away either, we just stay with the birds and keep an eye out. We do have our birds flight feathers trimmed to an extent that they can make graceful landings and even sometimes fly from the cage top to me sitting at my desk, but cannot get from one room to the next, so it is relatively easy to keep tabs on them. The cats are only one factor in keeping them trimmed --- there are so many potential hazards in our house that having the birds freely able to roam it without human supervision would be far too risky for my taste.

So when the birds are out of cage, they are supervised. In addition, during the night and when we are out of the house, not only are the birds in their cages with the doors securely closed, but the door to the room where the cages reside is closed.

We do avoid giving feather toys to the cats, and we don't encourage them to approach the birds. The closest thing we've had to incident was the GCC getting down off his cage and chasing the cat. The cat ran away.

One thing about cats is that they don't tend to just pounce without warning, they tend to stalk, observe, stalk... if they start to exhibit hunting behavior you can usually see what is going on and stop it.

With a kitten you have a prime opportunity to teach it that the bird is a family member, not a toy or a snack. Our oldest cat was raised with a bird and he shows absolutely no desire to hunt them at all. Just make sure the kitten has plenty of opportunity to play away from the birds, and don't encourage any kind of stalking behavior around them. Curiosity is OK, but the rule should be watch from a distance, don't approach.

 

[henpecked]

Hey deb, i knew you'd jump on this one, LOL

 

[DebsFlock]

Hey Cap'n, how'd you guess? ;-)

 

[josiesmom]

I got my cats as kittens, so they were here first. When I brought our Indian Ringneck home, I got a spray from the pet store that was safe for everyone, but was supposed to keep the cats away from the cage. It did for a while and I guess I dropped the ball because I stopped using it. Now, the cats can sit on the window sill right next the the cage, but they are very careful to keep fur and/or tails clear of the cage because the bird will bite...she has pulled out a whisker or two, so the cats don't even bother with her anymore. I think that eventually, all the animals learn their place...just keep a close eye out.

 

[evesta]

I have two cats and haven't had a problem. Doors are shut or cats ate out. Same goes with all my dogs, except my chihuahua which just runs away from the birds

 

[henpecked]

Oh i can spot a cat lover from way off.

 

[DebsFlock]

I thought you were going to say a little bird told you.

Since I've been active on bird related forums, I've seen this discussion come up a number of times, and I would estimate that about half the people who have birds also have cats or dogs. It seems to me that I've seen more reports of birds perishing or having close calls due to other types of household accidents, especially getting stepped on, sat on, slept on, crushed in a door or being lost as a fly-off than due to encounters with other household pets. I've also heard of several that were injured or killed by other parrots. I'm not saying there is no risk, but I think you can put the risk into perspective... there are a lot of risks to a bird in a house. And in the wild, for that matter. It would be nice to have really good statistics to work with.

 

[henpecked]

I think your right Deb. There's tons of dangers,we just have to learn how to keep everyone safe and happy. Our pet birds live longer than those in the wild.

 

[raleej337]

With what have been posted here, I can breathe a little. So far the kitten is still confined in one room, she'll be slowly introduced to the rest of the resident animals in the next few days.

Our house now looks like a mini-zoo, we have a saltwater tank, an arowana tank, dog (cavalier king charles spaniel), the pineapple GCC and now the cat.

Thank you all for your contributions.

 

[dawnkyung]

I'm late to the party, but wanted to add in that my TAG and I lived with a roommate who had a cat. No problems that I can speak of, although we did make sure that the kitty was put away in her room during the day as Sachi's cage was in the living room. I don't think the cat viewed the bird as prey in the slightest. We just kept close watch and scolded her whenever she went close to Sachi's cage - eventually she got bored and didn't even appear to notice she was there!