Turning our outdoor cat into an indoor cat (loud and scratches doors)
Hi there! We have a neutered male cat, 15 years old, that has had access to go outdoors and has lived her all his life. This summer we finally decided to keep him fully inside due to several reasons: safety (streets on our suburban area, a scary cat that visits our yard etc.), keeping wildlife safe (especially during birds' nesting season) and our neighbourhood is always complaining about outdoor cats.
His mother lived with us and was an outdoor cat. She just disappeared, a long time ago.
So, we constructed a small & safe outdoor catio, accessible from a cellar window. He goes there for short periods of time, but doesn't use any climbing possibilities we made there. Our cat luckily learned to use an indoor litter box quickly. He eats regularly.
It has been five and a half weeks now. He spends a lot of time sleeping during the days. Most of the time under a certain bed. He's never been much into playing and doesn't really react to any of the store bought ones we have, but we can get him to play for a while on some very simple DIY things.
We have given him a natural ingredients relaxing supplement from the pharmacy. Hard to tell if it has had any effect.
He has been able to sneak out a couple of times when someone was careless with a door or a window, but he has returned to our yard (either a few hours or over night) and allows me to pick himself up & bring him in.
During the night he's very loud and scratches the doors several times every night, which affects our sleep a lot. We have given up on the main door, which is old and scratchy anyways, but his latest trick is to scratch a balcony door that I wouldn't want destroyed and is located in my and my wife's bedroom. We tried the scent of coffee filters & lemon, we attached two-sided tape - none of these help. I realize ignoring these nightly antics would be the best, but this balcony door thing just drives me crazy and I have to pick him up. The reason why he wants to access the upper floor balcony is that he is able to jump down and access the free world!
I would like to hear your stories, if this resonates: do we have hope that our cat will get used to this, and how long it might still take? Also any tips for keeping him off door scratching & tips for any toys to activate a cat that's not that young and agile any more would be appreciated! Also: is it even possible to alter his rhythm so that he would be more awake during daytime (without forcing it)?
In an ideal situation he would stay indoors and access the catio any time when we are awake and it itsn't too cold outside for keeping the cellar window open. I think bringing him to walks outside with a harness would open a pandora's box and he would demand it constantly when we are trying to sleep.