The room where I spend most of my time and they get up to most of their shenanigans is pretty long across so, unless I used a super soaker, I'm not sure I could hit them with water.

I have occasionally thrown something soft - like a pillow, I have no desire to issue actual corporal punishment - in their direction. That's gotten mixed results.

[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

Canned air is good for the noise, but yeah they do tend to realise after a bit if there are no actual consequences.

I had a period initially when training them where I had to more or less chase them around the house to get a squirt in. It sucks, but they need the consistent punishment to reinforce the idea that certain behaviours are associated with punishment.

I feel you on not wanting to use punishment, unfortunately they aren't receptive to harsh language by default, they are really only built to respond to physical stimulus. Not using unneeded force is good obviously, the most I do are light taps on the nose if they bite someone too hard, that's really rare nowadays thankfully. Everything else is the squirt bottle if they don't respond to verbal signals.

Though I'm not an expert, just speaking from 1.5 demons worth of cats. Grain of salt etc. Eldest used to bite my stomach during important meetings during lockdown, sharing the apartment with her during that time was a real lesson in training cats.