Or you can do the opposite to a friend and put a small windup toy in the housing of his speaker box, so that his pitbull can shred it apart looking for the source of the scratchy noises coming from inside.

@Kaiser-Machead: *crosses Kaiser off of invitation list*

This stuff has saved my ass:
[www.bitterapple.com]
Spray a little of this on anything and your cats or dogs will never touch it again.

That bitter apple stuff really does work. Unfortunately, my cat decided that urine may be the best way to neutralize it.

i figured i'd have to put my cables and such inside PVC pipes since the girl won't allow me to catapult and dogapult her misbehaving pets away.

but this stuff sounds like the slightly more stylish compromise i am looking for.

@johnnyabnormal: what if you put it right on the dog? Will it try to run away from itself until it collapses from exhaustion?

Urg, my dog has already shredded many of my cables. Even chewed the plug off my favorite lamp (while it was plugged in). Most of my stuff is wireless now.

@johnnyabnormal: I heard about that, when i replace my equipment i'm going to try it out.

@johnnyabnormal: Used the Bitter Apple spray on some of my stuff when Zev was a tiny man, he seemed to prefer to chew on those items first, and then his toys.

My poor, poor BP30s. Big pillars of bipole wrapped in fabric.

Add five cats.

*weep*

Cats love the wii sensor bar cable.

I don't know why, but our new kitten will only eat that cable. She ignored everything else, and tore that thin little cable into 5 or 6 parts.

@Sora57: My dog already does that by chasing her tail.

@Kaiser-Machead: What is it with cats? Poop, piss, puke, hair balls...fur in everything. If my cats died today, I'd still be finding their fur in my stuff 10 years from now.

@shamoononon: Well, I have a 5 month old teething puppy in my sound design/composing suite all day long and she doesn't chew anything of mine since I sprayed that stuff.

@qbrad: It's best to give them something they would like better anyway...like frozen raw bones, turkey necks, etc. Most dog food places carry those these days. Just avoid cooked bones...they splinter and don't have much nutritional value.

The dog in the picture looks like it was posed with the speaker cover under its paw and is now confused and wondering if it's about to get yelled at even though it was posed that way.

Also, I want to hug it.

@johnnyabnormal: It's a cat's duty to remind its pet who the real head of the household is on a regular basis.

@Kaiser-Machead: Here's evidence of that:

[www.johnnyrandom.com]

He wouldn't leave the room, then knocked over the mic, spilled a glass of wine on a guitar and keyboard, then crapped on a houseplant an hour later. We're good buddies now, but he used to ruin almost every recording a few years back.

my rabbits have chewed through more than their fair share of cables. it is amazing that either of them is still alive and my house has been burned to the ground. once I had a monitor that wouldnt turn on and i discovered that one of them had chewed through the power cord. another time i had a mouse plugged into the front of a computer that was on the floor, all of a sudden the mouse stops working and I look down to see Jessica chewing away on the mouse cord. neat-idea-cubes or NIC cubes work really well for bunny proofing.

should say "house hasnt been burned to the ground"

@master_of_fm: I have the same exact problem. I have gone through 4 laptop power cables, 3 ethernet cables and 5 cell phone cables. Please provide detailed info and diagrams as to exactly how you rabbit proofed your electronics.

And bitter apple spray is just useless. I'm fairly sure they consider it a treat.

@johnnyabnormal: That was the best guitar solo I've ever heard!!!! :D

@johnnyabnormal: lol that's just epic right there.

Oddly and thankfully, my ex-cat preferred chewing up my cheapo cables rather than the good stuff (good stuff meaning Canare, not Monster or Pear /maintains some dignity).

Also, my cat used to run across my mixing board, turning on and off phantom power, eq, and otherwise altering my musical landscapes with her sneaky little paws. There was nothing I could really do to stop her, and frankly, many of her engineering decisions were better than mine anyway.

@johnnyabnormal: Awesome!

@frigg:
@Kaiser-Machead:
@wonkydonky:

When I met my wife 4 years ago, she warned me that her cat, Riley, was classified as a "type 3 aggressive cat". I didn't understand till he ripped my hand open when I was reaching for some salt and pepper. (he was hiding on the kitchen counter) I couldn't go near that little bastard without him attacking my legs or slicing my hands up. Eventually, I befriended him (through food) and now he sleeps on my lap all day. Btw, that recording is a few years old. All I had to do was walk towards him for those antics.

@frigg: Riley has tried to rename my hard drives "ryryfrfgyytyrftyty" and "bjknjkhbbjknbhjknjkn" at least 5 times.

I just wanted to comment on the cute dog in the picture.

Do they make human-sized ScatPads?

You spelled "Scat Man" wrong... baba doo be dop diddly dee.

@johnnyabnormal: I was just doing a little catch up reading on posts I had missed, found and played the audio recording of your cat. "Wow, scary stuff, that cat," I thought to myself absent-mindedly.

Then I looked down to the floor where I had forgot that my own two cats were sleeping. Both now sitting bolt upright, the wide-eyed expressions of ALERT! ALERT! on their faces was just priceless. After a bit they both settled back down to their normal lethargy, but for a minute it was quite funny. Thanks for posting.

@bosskev: He certainly sounds like a demon when he's pissed off. Last time a dog tried to get in his face (a pit bull) he ended up chasing it out of the house. Those claws are pretty nasty & I have the scars to prove it.

@everyone: I forgot to say what the ultimate A/V pet deterrent is: Get your hands on the following noises...

- Earthquake/avalanche
- Thunder
- Shotgun blast

If you catch your pet in the act of chewing things it shouldn't, play those as loud as you can without damaging your speakers. If my cats hear any of those, they piss off for at least an hour!

@johnnyabnormal:

I forgot to say what the ultimate A/V pet deterrent is: Get your hands on the following noises...

- Earthquake/avalanche
- Thunder
- Shotgun blast

... or, as bosskev reports, you could add Riley's own Exorcist-inspired tones to that list. Combined with Riley's talent for generating passwords ("bjknjkhbbjknbhjknjkn"), that cat's a gold mine, I tell ya, a gold mine!!!

@frigg: Seriously, huh? I think I showed you this a while back: I took that recording and used it for some "scratching" of my own:

[www.johnnyrandom.com]

The two previous rabbit posts I think are most critical: cats and dogs really can be trained to stay the f away from your cables (we have 4, they're all terribly behaved sometimes except for crap like that) but RABBITS. You can't keep them from killing themselves if they can reach it. I think the shocking might do it, but it also makes me think of Stephen King's short story.

@johnnyabnormal: nice!