This actually fits the official title of the thread.
The comment about not killing spiders etc made me remember a story my mother told from her days volunteering as a senior companion. This woman (who by the way owned an enormous and overfed cat) was very soft-hearted. She had an earwig in her house and didn’t want it there.
She put it outside in the garbage can which was empty at the time.
Then she got to thinking about how hot it must be in that metal garbage can in the sun.
So she took a little bottle cap full of water and put it on the bottom of the can.
Then she got to feeling bad about the earwig maybe being hungry so she took some breadcrumbs out.
She told that story on herself, knowing full well how silly it all seemed.
He’s not known for being an eater of things that aren’t food (cat or human). Let’s hope it stays that way.
Ant season started here the other day. We always get them in the house and haven’t found a way to stop it. He spends his time with the paw up high / the whack to kill them. It’s quite hilarious. This will keep him busy for a couple weeks until they are gone.
A few flakes of Quaker Oats (or similar dry products, like grits, or even rice), sprinkled judiciously near the points of entry, can work wonders in discouraging encroachment by ant colonies.
The drones carry them back to the nest and feed it to the queen, which results in her demise when the ingested food expands in her digestive system - and that generally results in the ants finding a less-foolhardy place to live.
Typically, the wires are in twisted pairs in round cable with a standard color coding. Flat cable should follow the color coding …
Brown
White with Brown Stripe
Orange
White with Orange Stripe
Green
White with Green Stripe
Blue
White with Blue Stripe
The stripes are tiny but they are there.
If he gets into it gain, that should help you match the wires up.
Our Learning Curve
20 years ago, when WIFI wasn’t as stable as it is now, we ran cable into each room when we were remodeling. Putting the ends onto the cable in the correct order taught us to pay attention to those striped white wires.
This is cheap Amazon crap from China. I can’t even go check the scraps that are still on the floor to see if there were any stripes on the white wires because I set up a barricade of suitcases to keep Ollie out of that area until I can figure out a better solution to secure these wires from cat teeth. There are a bunch of ethernet wires where he got to, he choose the flat one to chew on and through.
I didn’t see the stripes I was expecting to find to differentiate the wires but they could have been there. My eyes have seen better days up close.
It was pretty funny when it happened. My son came running down the stairs to find out what happened (mid-gaming…)…
That’s one way to get him out of his room. Set the cat free.
LOL
ETA - This stupid house was built with a “hard lid” ceiling, literally everywhere - mechanical room / closets / ETC. There’s no easy way to run anything without causing major drywall work, so I rigged it. Runs around the baseboard trim, to the stairs, where there was a nice groove I could get the wire into, then under the trim around my kitchen floor, under the fridge, and through the wall to my son’s room. It’s 95% out of sight in the basement and completely hidden on the main floor. Whatever works they say.
It was a lot of work to do this which is why I am so happy I could fix it…
I hope he doesn’t try power cords. I had a youngster cat once that would try to chew cords and I had to block them with furniture so he couldn’t get to them. He did outgrow that phase with all 9 lives.
The entire lily plant is toxic: the stem, leaves, flowers, pollen, and even the water in a vase. Eating just a small amount of a leaf or flower petal, licking a few pollen grains off its fur while grooming, or drinking the water from the vase can cause your cat to develop fatal kidney failure in less than 3 days.
Lovely Lilies and Curious Cats: A Dangerous Combination | FDA
He’s never been a plant eater. My MIL’s entire house is full of plants and flowers. He’s never been interested. Just internet cables.
I’m well aware of plant toxicity with animals which was the key reason why Ollie was limited to a part of her house that had no flowers / plants when we weren’t around with a giant wooden room partition last summer when he was tiny.
As he got bigger, he was able to push that very heavy partition out of the way and “break out”. So I put a hook and eye on it and attached it to the baseboard so he couldn’t move it anymore.
Then he got a little smarter and figured out how to push it just enough where he could get his paw through and flip the hook and eye up and out so he could break out.
Then I started putting a heavy chair leg on it so he couldn’t do that. Then, as time progressed and there was no interest in plants we let him roam free. Still hasn’t touched anything.
The peace lily is in my office and he only has interest in being down here when I am here. That plant is going outside soon for the summer.
He’s never touched that, the Christmas Cactus’s, the Poinsettia, or any of the other 10 or so plant types that my MIL has. Guess we have gotten lucky because he’s cat #7 that we’ve had and none of them were ever interested in any house plants. Purposely never got any of them that cat grass they sell because I didn’t want to spark interest in other plants.
