How To Ensure Your Pets Keep Off The Furniture

Keeping pets off your new furniture is not an easy task, as any one with experience in the mater will confirm. Like it or not, pets seem to have a fascination with jumping on your bed, lounging on your sofa and even exploring your wardrobe every now and then. It would be fine if they just sat nicely and were clean, but as we know this is often not true of pets. Instead they claw at your bedding, chew up your couch and get mud all over your lovely white wardrobes. Don’t keep pulling your hair out though, here are some tips on keeping the pesky pets off.

Training. It is only by making sure your pets are trained well that you will ensure they keep off your expensive living room and bedroom furniture. Training your pets from a young age is the best way as they tend to become more and more stubborn as they get older. You should instill the idea in your pets that furniture is for the use of people and not them. But if you do chose to let your pets on the furniture, you should at least train them to listen to you when you tell them to get down.

Pet repellents. If training your pets was never on the agenda and now they respect you as much as their fleas do, you’ll need to tackle the problem head on. You can buy certain powders and sprays that cats, dogs and other animals simply detest. These tend to have quite citrusy smells that are pleasant to humans but are too much for animals with sensitive smell.

Discipline. If you have trained your pet then they will respond better to discipline, but any animal will learn if you go about it the right way. This doesn

The Big Cat Breeds Needs Rescue Shelters

Thousands of cats find homes in cat rescue operations. These cats aren’t always the small pets people usually have in their homes. Sometimes, the cats in question are big cats, such as mountain lions or tigers. Purchased through the black market and bought because they are unique creatures, big cat breeds start small and cuddly, but soon grow to large proportions that most owners aren’t prepared to deal with.

Big cats rescue steps in when the owners find they can’t handle their exotic pets any longer. Either the owner abandons the big cats, thinking that because the cat was “wild” to begin with, it can easily fend for itself, or they start to neglect the animal.

Worse, the animal attacks someone. The authorities rush in and do their best to remedy the situation, sometimes having to put the animal down on the spot. If the big cats are lucky, the authorities see fit to send the cat rescue center.

A zoo is not an option. Many times, this is where the trade started. Unscrupulous zoos breed big cats in captivity to increase attendance at the zoo because the public enjoys seeing new babies. When the felines are grown, the public loses interest, and the zoo can’t support the larger cat.

The animal is sold off to private brokers who then turn around and sell the animals to the public. Anyone might end up with the feline. Even worse, that owner might try to breed the cat to have another cub or to sell cubs to his friends. When this happens, the cycle begins all over again.

Supply and demand are the two biggest contributing factors to big cat breeds ending up in a cat rescue. The breeders will keep breeding the cats, and the public will continue to buy them. People have a fascination with getting close to an exotic feline. What the public fails to realize is that there is a massive responsibility that goes along with caring for big cats.

The cats were never meant to be pets to begin with. You can’t keep them indoors, and keeping a big cat outdoors isn’t much better. These cat breeds play rough. They are hunters, and thousands of years of instinct tells them they are the top of the food chain.

That baby tiger will not “bond” with your toddler. This is not a Walt Disney movie. You can bet that when the tiger reaches maturity, your child, your domestic house pet, and you may be labeled as lunch.

Big cats have been kept in cages that are far too small for them. The minimum size required by law of an animal’s cage is one that is large enough for the animal to stand up and turn around in.

We all cry out in anger when we hear of Vietnam Veterans who had been tortured in “tiger cages”. Why should we subject large felines to the same type of torture?

A big cat rescue shelter can offer a better quality of life for the abandoned animal. Many big cats that do reach the rescue stage are suffering from malnutrition.

Others who might have been in show business are nervous wrecks from over-stimulation or are nearly blind from a life of flashing light bulbs and the bright lights of photo shoots. The people who run the shelters have the means and experience to raise the animal properly and meet the cat’s nutritional requirements.

Only eight states have passed bans on owning big cat breeds as pets since 2005. The number of deaths related to owning a big cat continues to grow, as all that’s required for an individual to own a big cat for a commercial venture in the United States is very low and a permit from the USDA.

Breaking the cycle for responsible preservation of big cats for future generations is an important factor in their survival.



By: MIKE SELVON

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