When I lived with my ex-wife, we would store the carriers away until needed. When they were needed, we brought them out, and the cats immediately got suspicious. The battles to get them into their carriers were epic.

A vet tech made a comment about how she was feeding her pets *in* their carriers. That way they did not panic when seeing the carriers.

Now that I'm divorced, I took the vet tech's comment in stride. I don't feed Maddox in his carrier, but his carrier is always around for him to see. So when I need him in the carrier, there's no epic battle.

In preparation for the move, I got him a bigger carrier. He had one, but it was on the small side for him. He's a big boy.

So I got the new carrier out. I locked the front door, but I kept the top door opened in case he'd like to check it out. He's been in and out of the carrier. Great!

Today, I heard something. I came out to the living room and found that he had closed the top door behind him. 😂

I opened the top door for him, but he stayed in there for a good ten minutes after I had "freed" him. I guess he liked it in there.

There are many ways to fix the problem of the door possibly closing behind him. I came up with a 5-minutes solution involving a bungee cord attached to the table. That'll do for now. I unfortunately cannot locate smaller cords. They would be nicer to use than the big cord I got.

#cats #CatsOfMastodon #CatsOfTheFediverse #CatCarrier #BungeeCord

Here's a trick.

Once upon a time, a traveling vet that we had called came to our house. The vet's helper was used to fostering cats. She told us about one thing that she did.

Basically, she used the cat carrier as the feeding spot for the cat. This way, the carrier would be associated with good things.

My ex-wife and I did not do this. We had already trained our cats to fear the carrier, unfortunately. However, I'm now putting this practice into action. I feed Noche in the carrier.

I expect when I have to take him to the vet, I'm just doing to have to drop a couple of treats in there, and he's going to jump right in, entirely unaware of the trap I've set for him. BWAHAHAHAHA!

That's very different from what happened with the cats that my ex-wife and I had. They were barricading themselves in the bathroom, saying "YOU WON'T TAKE US ALIVE!" Then we'd have to wear plate armor to avoid being shredded to bits.

(I think I previously referred to Noche as a she. That was a mistake. I misread the paperwork, and I assumed, given that noche is a feminine word in Spanish.)

#cats #CatsOfMastodon #CatCarrier #trickery