Hi,

I have recently adopted a small stray cat, hoping that she will make
my older 7 year old cat more playful.

Unfortunatly, I have discovered that she has tons of energy and rarely
sits down. Whenever somebody is at the door she comes running, she
climbs until she gets right under the ceiling, but she does most of
the things all alone.

The really big problem is that she plays with things that she
shouldn't have, i.e. a flower vase, some CDs, the mouse pointer, my
papers, guest's shoes, etc. Also, whenever I leave, she hits the
garbage can and plays with all the things in there. I have a garbage
can with a lid that swings if you want to throw something, but she saw
that if you hit it and it falls down, the lid will also fall down and
another garbage can with a step-on button that opens the lid. Both of
them are pretty small so she has enough power to make them fall.

I can't hide everything in my house (she plays with small objects and
leaves them behind the sofa or behind the furniture) and I can't let
her get out of my flat as there are a couple of stray, and pretty mad,
dogs that hate cats (thanks to some of my "friendly" neighbours).

What can I do to make her a bit less hyperactive? Her behavior is
starting to get annoying because I don't want to lose at least half an
hour to clean up her mess... Some said that catnip might be a
solution, but are there other ways?

Andrei