How to tame an excited cat in the evening hours

Q: My girlfriend and I got a kitten over Christmas. He is now 6 months old but we cannot sleep anymore. He tears all over our apartment all night long and bounces on our bed as we are sleeping. We put him on the floor as soon as he does and scold him, but he is right back again five minutes later. We are going to neuter him next month and we were wondering if that will stop his behavior or if there is something else we can try? -- Frank Rice in Baltimore

A: Neutering only removes an animals desire to mate and any behaviors related to mating. It certainly will not stop your cat from being happy and energetic at an inopportune time for you.

Cats usually sleep all day when we are not home, so their day is just beginning as soon as ours is ending. He has the whole night now to run and play and cannot understand why you do not want to join in.

The answer here is to remove the opportunity and the behavior will stop. You just have to close the bedroom door at night and do not open it no matter what he does. Of course he will most likely cry outside the door all night, but that should only last for the first few nights. After a week of this he will figure out that this behavior does not lead to anything anymore. Then he will begin to look for some other amusement to keep him busy all night and you can sleep in peace.

Q: Our grey parrot likes to place his uneaten food and trash into his water dish and by the time we get home his water is filthy. We change it right away but it bothers me that he does not have clean water to drink during the day. Will this hurt him? Does he know not to drink the water when it is so dirty and to wait until we clean it? -- Adam Dash, Milwaukee

A: I prefer to let the questions of what a pet knows and does not know to be debated by those pet keepers that like to chatter about their pets on those Internet forums.

In your case this problem is easily solved by teaching your parrot to drink out of a water bottle. There are quite a few models out there for parrots that are made of glass and stainless steel. They mount to the outside of the cage with only the spout inside the cage. Mount it outside the cage in a way so that the spout ends up right above the bird's water dish. Then leave water in the bottle and the dish both for a week. After a week you can leave the dish in the cage but do not put any water in it.

During that week period, the bird will have been fussing with the spout out of curiosity and will know that water is in it. That way he will have both options and slowly realize that the spout is where he can drink his water.

You still need to change the water in the bottle daily; a water bottle can grow all sorts of bacteria in it. It might be a good idea to have two bottles on hand, this way you will always have a clean one and you can put the clean one on the cage as you are leaving in the morning and wash out the dirty one later.

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(Marc Morrone has kept almost every kind of animal as a pet for the last half-century and he is happy to share his knowledge with others. Although he cannot answer every question, he will publish many of those that have a general interest. You can contact him at petxperts2@aol.com; please include your name, city and state.)