Since the other person living in this apartment is a major league packrat AND stores one room full of her elderly aunts stuff in the room next to bedroom/layout there is no other place to have a layout. I do have about 1/2 ton of papers to sort through in my office from a business I used to have. Once I get through that I possibly could turn my office back into a bedroom and even expand the layout some. Our first cat 3 years ago was mellow, very vocal and only jumped up on the bed. We lost him last april and got this young and very high strung tortoise shell calico. She is so high strung we absolutely won't give her catnip. She goes in, on, over, under, behind, in front every anything in this apartment. She still doesn't have a name. I have thought of: Trouble, Houdini, Escape artist, Sneaky. But for now we just call her "cat".
Modeling the "Fargo Area Rapid Transit" in O scale 3 rail.
Yeah but you know your in trouble when they get on the train table and ...........
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
http://rtssite.shutterfly.com/
spankybird you just need to have a little talk with him
you just need to have a little talk with him
That has got to be one of the funniest pix I've ever seen. I crack up everytime I see it. But I agree, once a cat goes rogue, fugetaboutit!
I second the hot pepper advice, works for dogs and the homeless too.
That's the thing you gotta be concerned about.
Once the cat takes on the role of a hired assassin, all bet's are off.
Alton Junction
Yo Spanky don't look now buttttttt
I am a person with a very active inner child. This is why my wife loves me so. Willoughby, Ohio - the home of the CP & E RR. OTTS Founder www.spankybird.shutterfly.com
Sprinkle a little powdered cayanne pepper around the layout where it jumps up, sits or sleeps. Cats have very sensitive smell and the cayanne pepper is not one of their favorite scents, they will sniff it and be put off by it and will stay off the layout to avoid it and It does not harm them.
Have fun with your trains
Boyd,
When you get a good answer, let me know.
My layout is in the basement, and my cat was constantly jumping up onto it (36" height, so no problem for Gracie). Three times, I had to replace a plowed farm field because she liked to lay on it and it would come up off the layout as she got up. When she started chewing the telephone poles, I banned her from the basement. She loves being in the basement, so I need some way to keep her off the layout. I have looked at rollup screens as a possibility but it is too expensive.
Rich
I have 2 cats and one or the other is always on the layout sleeping in one of the tunnels. I have emergency pop up holes under the layout to retreave any cars that may be in a tunnel from the end of a train that have been knocked off track. The cats will either crawl in the tunnels through a portal or sometimes up through one of the pop up holes. They have yet to break anything on the layout in 5 years.
There really isn't much of anything you can do. As rtraincollector says, cats are naturally curious and like high places. If the cat is going to be in the same room as the layout, nothing short of electrified barbed wire is going to keep him off.
The only real solution -- and I know you don't want to hear this -- is to have the layout in a separate room and keep the door closed to the cat at all times. Yes, there are sprays that supposedly repel cats, but take it from someone with eight cats, they don't work worth a... Well, they don't work.
If you don't have another room (maybe you're in a small apartment?), then there's no way out but to find a place that has one. Cats are fascinated by raised platforms, and nothing we can do will change that. I've never known a cat to cause trouble with a floor layout (when the trains are moving, they'll watch them; otherwise, they just ignore them), but a proper elevated platform-style layout is pretty much irresistible.
When I was a kid, our cat would always crawl up on our Christmas train platform and go to sleep under the tree. She never harmed anything, but had it been a permanent layout, the cat-hair problem would have become serious eventually.
I think rttraincollector is right. I moved my layout to the garage - the cat doesn't go in there!
I don't think she really hurt anything anyway, it's just my layout increased in size. There were several pictures posted some time back of cats on layouts terrorizing Plasticville people.
wyomingscout
that is know as mission impossible if cat is going to be able to come in room. Cats are naturally curious and like high places.
You can try spraying cat with water from a water bottle or squirt gun but then normally you just get the cat jittery when your around and its on the table and it may break something when trying to get away.
I plan to have my trains in another room. although at times I will set them up on the floor and they like to watch them.
good luck not sure if the product that you see advertised usually at vets offices really work that good think its suppose to offend there smell but then the cat may never come in your room and it sounds like you want both.
How do you keep the cat from jumping up on the layout? My problem is my bed is in the same room as the train layout.
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