Animal Welfare Professionals

I have a 6 month old kitten named Piper...or more appropriately, hyper-Piper! This girl loves to climb - anything, all the time. I’ve frequently said I should have named her “Get Down” because we are constantly fussing at her! lol

Piper is super active - she’s long, lean, fast, and very smart. She has so much energy - way more than any other cat we have had. She has toys, a playmate (another kitten who is 3 weeks younger), and places she is allowed to climb including a cat tree. We even added a wall playground for her because she was climbing my clothes to get to the shelf in the closet. Although she likes the wall playground, she still likes to climb up my clothes to get to the top...I think she just wants to do it her way! She probably would use the wall playground more often but it’s in my master closet so she usually only plays on it when I’m getting dressed. Unfortunately, installing more wall playgrounds in the living room is not an option - not only do we not have space for it, my husband won’t go for that at all. 

Piper doesn’t just want to climb...she NEEDS to climb. When we make her get down from wherever it is she’s not supposed to be - like the kitchen counter, kitchen table, shower curtain, and headboards just to name a few, we can see her scoping out a new place to climb. Right now, she has her eyes set on the top of the shower curtain rod and the trim at the top of the closet door (all 1” of it!). I have no doubt she will master the curtain rod soon, when we’re not looking. Her climbing (or rather a fall from climbing) has already resulted in a dislocated shoulder, but she didn’t learn her lesson!

Any suggestions? We use a squirt bottle but she only mildly dislikes it. We tried using foil on the kitchen table, but she would just jump over it to get to an uncovered spot. My husband doesn’t want to keep foil on everything to keep her from jumping and climbing. Besides, if we block one thing, she shrugs it off and finds something else to climb  

Piper is an indoor only cat although I’m sure she would love to go outside. There are coyotes, hawks, and owls where we live so being outdoors is not a safe option. I’m trying to figure something out like an outdoor cattery, but that won’t happen until spring at the earliest. I’m at my wits end trying to keep this very active kitten occupied and content! Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

ps - sorry for the long post!

I feel you. We've got one of those as well. I keep telling myself, she won't be like this forever. We've gotten a whole bunch of toys to help her get her energy out, and it's helped. This toy in particular is awesome, but you have to monitor them with it to make sure no one swallows the string, per the reviews. I turn it on when I'm making dinner and can keep an eye on her.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IRJ7NL0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also food puzzle toys like this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L4CCJ9H/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

We have like 10 food puzzles. I feed her every meal in them on a rotating basis. Getting her to use her brain to figure out how to get the food tires her out as much as exercise.

I've also heard good things about clicker training, but I haven't tried it yet.

Thank you for the suggestions - I will definitely try them out. She has one food puzzle that she figured out really quickly - I think she needs a harder one!