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We have a cat. His name is Linus. He’s two years old now.

Recently he started the bad habit of making incredible amounts of noise beginning every morning at 4:30 AM in the form of meowing, scratching, pawing, and general cat-play. It’s incredibly annoying, to the point that Steph and I are losing significant amounts of sleep because of our crazy cat.

Without going through all the details, suffice it to say we’ve tried everything to quiet him down. We let him roam the house – he makes noise. We lock him in our bedroom, he makes noise. We lock him in a different room, he poops on the floor because he’s bitter.

The most annoying of his traits is his incessant pawing on our closed bedroom door – believe it our not, this keeps us up the most. So we made a little investment the other day. While perusing through Petsmart, amongst all the cute little well behaved puppies and kitties, we picked up a feline torture device known as “The ScatMat“.

This handy little tool, when rolled out on the floor, sends 9 volts of electric current through the feet and/or paws of any trespasser who steps on the mat. For the last three nights we have rolled out the ScatMat in front of our bedroom door, and I must say… works like a charm.

Night #1: About 20 minutes after we rolled it out he started sniffing around and investigating the mat, and finally he ventured onto it. Hair on end. Tail puffy. Jumped straight up in the air about a foot, ran into the wall, and dove under the bed, not to make a peep for the rest of the night.

Night #2: We read that for effective “training” we should try covering the mat w/ a sheet or towel so that eventually we can remove the ScatMat and simply leave the towel on the floor as Linus will have associated the shock with the sheet, not the mat. To work effectively through the pillowcase we threw on the floor we had to turn the power up one notch. Oh my. He hit the thing at about 5AM and it sounded like he had climbed halfway up the wall in shock. Once again, not a peep for the rest of the morning.

Night #3: Linus has now picked up a new trait when entering or leaving the room. Regardless of whether or not the pillowcase is on the floor he now jumps a full three feet through the door frame in attempts to “clear” whatever is shocking his little paws. He steers clear of the door from now on, has settled himself down, and Steph and I have been sleeping wonderfully.

And that. my friends, is how you train a cat.