Mishu

You bring the cat home Saturday. It’s Wednesday and your apartment has a couch, a bed and nothing a cat actually needs. That gap between “I want a cat” and “I have a cat” closes fast, and most of what you’ll read online about it is either padded with filler or written by someone who’s … Read more

You cleaned your apartment top to bottom and the smell is still there. That is the maddening part of cat odor. It does not respond to regular cleaning the way other smells do. Knowing how to get rid of cat smell in an apartment comes down to one idea: eliminate the source, do not cover … Read more

Your cat moves fast. The moment you open that carrier, they’re behind the stove, inside a cabinet, and halfway up the curtains. An apartment cat proofing checklist covers more than moving a plant or two, and most owners wish they’d finished theirs before day one. I learned that when I found my cat sitting calmly … Read more

How to keep apartment clean with cat is a problem that sneaks up on you slowly. The first week your cat moves in, everything seems fine. By week three there’s a fine layer of fur on the couch you can’t explain and a smell near the litter box that greets you every time you open … Read more

My cat spent three days under the bathroom vanity after my first move. I spent those same three days sliding food under the cabinet and talking to a piece of furniture like it might answer back. What I’ve learned from that move and every one since is that the outcome gets decided in the 48 … Read more

I learned how to set up cat space in a small apartment slowly and expensively, by buying things in the wrong order. First purchase: a wide three-tier cat tree that ate a third of my living room floor. My cat used one shelf on it twice, then ignored the whole thing for good. What I … Read more

Is it ok to have a cat in a small apartment is the question I asked myself on repeat the first week I moved into a 380-square-foot studio with my two-year-old cat. She spent the first three days sitting on the single windowsill and I spent those three days convinced I had ruined her life. … Read more

The best cat breeds for apartment living aren’t the smallest ones or the quietest ones on paper. They’re the ones whose temperament actually fits a limited-territory, high-routine lifestyle. I learned this the hard way after bringing a young Bengal mix into a one-bedroom apartment and spending eight months managing shredded blinds, 5 a.m. sprinting and … Read more

How to keep a cat happy in a studio apartment was a question I had no answer to on the day I signed a lease for a four-hundred-square-foot place and brought home a two-year-old tabby the same weekend. The guilt hit fast. She spent hours on the narrow windowsill pressing her nose to the glass, … Read more

My cat spent twenty minutes stalking the corner of my TV during a nature documentary. She wasn’t lounging near the screen. She was crouched low, tail sweeping the floor, watching a squirrel with the same focused intensity she gives the bird feeder outside the window. That’s what got me asking do cats watch TV in … Read more