Q: We love our calico cat but she is a problem child. She is a rescue and we have had her for almost nine months. She is crazy. She runs all over the house from room to room, sliding over rugs and up and down furniture. She loves to play, but is always climbing on something she shouldn't including window screens, the kitchen counter and window sills. We have tried scolding and spraying with water, but neither works. Does anyone obedience-train cats?
_ Karen Morris, Roosevelt, N.Y.
A: The first thing that you need to do is to get the idea that the cat is doing something wrong out of your head. Cats have no idea of right and wrong behavior. Spraying the cat with water just reinforces the cat's idea of how ridiculous and random humans' actions are.
You have to get the cat a couple of those big cat trees that have shelves and tunnels on them and put them in her favorite rooms. Make the cat tree even more attractive by rubbing catnip all over it. This is more fun for her to play on than your couch.
Another thing to try: Get a big cardboard box and tape the top closed and then cut a few holes in the sides so that she can crawl in the holes and explore the inside of the box. Something like this can keep her busy for a long time and thus tire her out and divert her attention away from the other household objects that she is knocking over.
To keep her from jumping on the kitchen countertops, put a few strips of double-sided tape on them so that when she does jump on the counter she will feel the sticky tape touching her paws and decide for herself that this is not a nice place to be. If she likes to jump on the windowsills, get a couple of those cat window seats and install them in front of her favorite windows so she can lay there and look out the window as long as she wants and thus leave the curtains alone.
Q: I have had a blue-and-gold macaw for 20 years, and he is a perfect pet.
We moved from New York City to Glen Cove this summer. Our house has many oak trees on the property and there are bushels of acorns everywhere right now. Can I give them to my parrot? We always give him walnuts and hazelnuts and he enjoys opening them and eating them and has done so all his life, so I cannot see why an acorn is any different.
_ Rita Woods, Glen Cove, N.Y.
A: I have been giving acorns to my pet birds and rodents all my life. I have sampled them myself as well and discovered that they are very bitter. However this does not seem to bother the birds that do like them. Acorns seem to be an acquired taste. Some pets enjoy opening them up and playing with them, then just dropping the remains on the bottom of the cage uneaten.
Some of my birds have problems opening the acorns, so I have to score them with a knife, much like you do with a chestnut before you roast it. My rodents like them as well. I give them to my gerbils, hamsters and degus and chinchillas.
Q: I have lived on the South Shore now for 10 years and every fall we find these gigantic "cave crickets" in our basement. We got a bearded dragon for our son last winter and every week we have to buy 75 crickets to feed him. The crickets we have in our basement are much larger and juicier looking than the ones we buy, and we wonder if we could feed them to our dragon? We have those Italian wall lizards in our backyard and I am sure that they are eating those crickets but we wanted to check with you before we gave them to our dragon.
_ Juan Fernande, Lindenhurst, N.Y.
A: Just about all animals that live in a state of nature harbor various types of internal parasites. The crickets that a pet store sells have been born and bred indoors via husbandry methods that render them free of the parasites that a wild cricket may be harboring, and since pet dragons have been fed the domesticated crickets for generation after generation, they would have no resistance to the parasites. So in this particular instance I would have to vote against the natural foods.
