How do I stop my cat from chewing on cords?

Have you tried ye olde spray bottle trick? You know, squirting her when you catch her doing it? If you don’t want to make the cords taste bad with bitter apple, which would be my recommendation due to the dangerousness of chewing electrical cords, you have to make it unpleasant. I had a rabbit that electrocuted himself after chewing through a lamp cord (thankfully, he was fine), so I’m pretty wary of this particular habit.

I’ve had this problem with one of my cats in the past. As @MissAnthrope said, keep a spray bottle handy and get him with good stream of water. After a few times, once he starts seeing the bottle, he’ll run.
The other way that also helped was when he was chewing, I grabbed him up and throw him into the cat crate. Giving a few minute time out, yea, sounds weird, but also works.

Get a rawhide chew toy, get it a bit damp and put by the stratch post sometimes will encourage chewing on that..
Good Luck

Put the cords inside a plastic tube. Like the ones used for irrigation. Here’s a website with some for sale- http://cableorganizer.com/wire-loom/colored-b.html

They’re recommended for bunny-proofing so it should withstand a cat. You slit down the side of the tube and insert the cables. They’re easy to move as well.

@MissAnthrope – The spray bottle trick would work, but she doesn’t do it when we’re around. I have a feeling she just does it out of boredom…

Go wireless.

@mowens – Actually, that’s why I bought a set of wireless headphones. I went through three sets of headphones in two weeks.

@amnorvend you sure we don’t have the same cat?

Perhaps it would be a good idea to keep the cat outdoors. The smell of a cat house is never pleasant for guests, and you yourself are probably oblivious to it. Another solution is to show the cat the cord and then rub it’s nose in it’s excrement. I do not own any animals myself but I once read that this method is useful for training dogs to behave indoors. Good luck with it.

@beautifulbobby193 What’s the point of having a cat if you keep it outside all the time? It’ll catch diseases and fleas and get dirty. You can control the smell of your house if you have cats.

“Another solution is to show the cat the cord and then rub it’s nose in it’s excrement.” Never heard of that before.

Your cat is fulfilling a need to sharpen it’s teeth. Buy something it can do that with.

I second bitter apple, as well as the organizer tubes. It might be a pain to put the bitter apple on all the cords, but you probably won’t have to keep re-applying it.
Shoving an animal’s nose in its excrement is only going to teach it that you’re twisted.

Let him keep chewing. He will learn.

spray cold water in its face when you catch it doing it, alternatively when i got my first cat i sort of trained it like a dog, ie smacked its nose gently when i caught it doing something naughty, seemed to work for him he learned not to rip up my mothers curtains!!!

@beautifulbobby193 – Two points. A well-maintained litterbox doesn’t stink up the house. We have two in ours and you’d smell dog before you knew we have cats.

Two, please do not rub your animals’ faces in feces. That is a really uninformed, unnecessary, and cruel thing to do. For one, what does feces even have to do with chewing cords? Even a human would have to make a huge leap in logic to connect the two. Secondly, dogs and cats have rather short short-term memories (average is 5 minutes for dogs, 15 minutes for cats), so rubbing their face in poop will seem really random and cruel to them. Having lived with and trained several animals, I can testify that showing a chewed object and punishing does not work. The animal may show “guilt” when they’re shown the trash all over the floor, but the action is done and I honestly don’t think they get the concept of being punished for something done in the past.

The most effective way to train an animal is by positively reinforcing good behavior. The way to extinguish a behavior is to associate the action with something unpleasant (a squirt of water, a loud bang, etc.).

MissA – just on one of your points where you speak about memory. If the memory span was as short as you said it would be impossible to train the animals and they would never recognise you in the morning after you come down after a nights sleep.

Perhaps the punishment is not the best method of training – but it a form of training, a suggestion – please don’t try to convince us that one of the main reasons against doing it would be because the creature wouldn’t remember it. An animal can very quickly learn that when they do one thing another thing happens, and this should not be underestimated. If they realise that one action leads to something positive happening they will continue to do it – if they realise that one action leads to something negative happening, they will quickly stop doing it. This I would imagine is a basic concept of animal training.

As for the smell, a non-cat owner can often smell if cats have been spending a lot of time in the house and especially on the furniture – the smell is not restricted to where or how they litter.

^^You obviously have no idea about cats, except how to cause them harm and make them dislike you.

Bind up the cords, in a line, as tight as possible, and somehow afix them to the wall. Kitty will have less of a chance of being able to bite down.

And the spray bottle works for everything, but you cannot let kitty see you do it, or it won’t work. Also, DO NOT SPRAY KITTY IN THE FACE. The cat will interpret it as aggression.

@beautifulbobby193 – Note that I said short-term memory. I’m intrigued by the fact that you’re arguing with me over something you yourself admitted you know little about.

@tinyfaery I didn’t know that about the spraying thing, thanks!

MissA, happy to intrigue you.

”...The animal may show “guilt” when they’re shown the trash all over the floor…”
Generally, what we interpret as ‘guilt’ is really the animal thinking, ” Oh shit, the humans really get pissed when they see stuff on the floor!”

@ccrow – That’s why I put “guilt” in quotation marks. :P

Gotcha- :-)

Use Pet cord protectors

I’m with @ChazMaz. Spray some tuna scent on a lamp cord and let nature do the rest.

@Blondesjon Evil. ;)

I PROMISE the problem will take care of itself.

Try putting some onion juice on the cords. This should do the trick.

Could you give him food to chew on instead?

Oh god i had the same problem, i put hot chilli sauce on the cables, they can smell it a mile away! my cat still tried to have a go, he never did it again, now the sauce is long gone and i have no problems!, You could also try getting a water sprayer and watching him and lightly spray his face when he tries to bite, cats are hard to train!