What to Do When Your Cat Keeps Rummaging the Trash
📝 Summary
Why do cats love rummaging the bin, even with no food inside? The best fix is a lidded trash can.
1 What to Do When Your Cat Keeps Rummaging the Trash
Why cats rummage trash
What reduced a fine hunter to a scavenger? 3,000+ years of taming (dogs over 10,000) didn’t domesticate cats. Hunting drive fades, but born curiosity remains.
The bin’s varied smells and materials are a natural toy box! Reaching in and fishing out a prize is ‘hunting’—satisfying curiosity and dexterity.
Special cases
If the bin is lidded but the cat won’t quit—learned to flip the lid or even knocks it over—what then?
Get a cat-proof bin; put a solid odor repellent on top (orange, garlic, alcohol scent—test what your cat hates; you can also rub it on cables). See what in the bin interests it and move that waste elsewhere. Next time it rummages, lure it with a toy. After a while it loses interest in that bin.
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